1. The Vanishing American Family
by Scuba Z
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2. We live in a strange time.
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3. Extraordinary events keep happening
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4. that undermine the
stability of our world.
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5. Suicide bombs, waves of refugees,
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6. Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin,
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7. even Brexit.
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8. Yet those in control
seem unable to deal with them,
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9. and no-one has any vision
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10. of a different
or a better kind of future.
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11. Something I Can Never Have
by Nine Inch Nails
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12. This film will tell the story
of how we got to this strange place.
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13. It is about how,
over the past 40 years,
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14. politicians, financiers
and technological utopians,
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15. rather than face up to the real
complexities of the world,
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16. retreated.
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17. Instead, they constructed
a simpler version of the world
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18. in order to hang on to power.
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19. And as this fake world grew,
all of us went along with it,
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20. because the simplicity
was reassuring.
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21. Even those who thought they were
attacking the system -
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22. the radicals, the artists,
the musicians,
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23. and our whole counterculture -
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24. actually became part
of the trickery,
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25. because they, too, had retreated
into the make-believe world,
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26. which is why their opposition
has no effect
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27. and nothing ever changes.
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28. The Vanishing American Family
by Scuba Z
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29. But this retreat into a dream world
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30. allowed dark and destructive forces
to fester and grow outside.
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31. Forces that are now returning
to pierce the fragile surface
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32. of our carefully constructed
fake world.
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33. The story begins in two cities
at the same moment in 1975.
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34. One is New York.
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35. The other is Damascus.
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36. It was a moment when two ideas
about how it might be possible
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37. to run the world without politics
first took hold.
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38. In 1975, New York City
was on the verge of collapse.
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39. For 30 years, the politicians
who ran the city
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40. had borrowed more and more money
from the banks
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41. to pay for its growing services
and welfare.
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42. But in the early '70s, the middle
classes fled from the city
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43. and the taxes they paid disappeared
with them.
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44. So, the banks lent the city
even more.
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45. But then, they began to get worried
about the size of the growing debt
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46. and whether the city would ever be
able to pay it back.
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47. And then one day in 1975,
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48. the banks just stopped.
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49. The city held its regular meeting
to issue bonds
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50. in return for the loans, overseen by
the city's financial controller.
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51. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.
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52. Today, the city of New York is
offering for competitive bidding
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53. the sale of 260 million
tax anticipation notes,
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54. of which 100 million will mature
on June 3rd, 1975.
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55. The banks were supposed
to turn up at 11am,
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56. but it soon became clear that none
of them were going to appear.
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57. The meeting was rescheduled for 2pm
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58. and the banks
promised they would turn up.
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59. The announcement on behalf of the
controller is that the offer,
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60. which we had expected to receive
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61. and announce at two o'clock
this afternoon,
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62. is now expected at four o'clock.
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63. Paul, does this mean that, so far,
nobody wants those bonds?
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64. We will be making a further
announcement at four o'clock
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65. and anything further that I could
say now I think would not advance
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66. the interest of the sale,
which is now in progress.
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67. Does this mean that you have not
been able to sell them so far today?
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68. We will have a further announcement
at four o'clock.
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69. What happened that day in New York
marked a radical shift in power.
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70. The banks insisted that in order
to protect their loans
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71. they should be allowed
to take control of the city.
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72. The city appealed to the President,
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73. but he refused to help,
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74. so a new committee was set up
to manage the city's finances.
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75. Out of nine members,
eight of them were bankers.
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76. It was the start
of an extraordinary experiment
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77. where the financial institutions
took power away from the politicians
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78. and started to run
society themselves.
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79. The city had no other option.
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80. The bankers enforced what was called
"austerity" on the city,
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81. insisting that thousands of
teachers, policemen
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82. and firemen were sacked.
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83. This was a new kind of politics.
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84. The old politicians believed
that crises were solved
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85. through negotiation and deals.
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86. The bankers had a completely
different view.
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87. They were just the representatives
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88. of something that couldn't
be negotiated with -
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89. the logic of the market.
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90. To them, there was no alternative
to this system.
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91. It should run society.
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92. Just by shifting paper around,
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93. these slobs can make $60 million,
$65 million in a single transaction.
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94. That would take care of all
of the lay-offs in the city,
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95. so it's reckless, it's cruel
and it's a disgrace.
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96. There would be a fair number
of bankers, of course,
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97. who'd say it's the unions who have
been too greedy.
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98. What would your reaction be to that?
I guess they're right in a way.
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99. If you can make $60 million
on a single transaction,
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100. and a worker makes $8,000, $9,000
a year, I suppose they're correct,
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101. and as they go back to their little
estates in Greenwich, Connecticut,
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102. I want to wish them well, the slobs.
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103. But the extraordinary thing was
no-one opposed the bankers.
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104. The radicals and the left-wingers
who, ten years before,
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105. had dreamt of changing America
through revolution did nothing.
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106. They had retreated
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107. and were living in the abandoned
buildings in Manhattan.
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108. The singer Patti Smith later
described the mood of disillusion
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109. that had come over them.
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110. "I could not identify
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111. "with the political movements any
longer," she said.
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112. "All the manic activity
in the streets.
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113. "In trying to join them,
I felt overwhelmed
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114. "by yet another form
of bureaucracy."
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115. What she was describing was the rise
of a new, powerful individualism
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116. that could not fit with the idea
of collective political action.
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117. Instead, Patti Smith and many others
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118. became a new kind
of individual radical,
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119. who watched the decaying city
with a cool detachment.
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120. They didn't try and change it.
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121. They just experienced it.
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122. Look at that. Isn't that cool?
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123. I love that, where, like,
kids write all over the walls.
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124. That, to me, is neater
than any art sometimes.
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125. "Jose and Maria forever."
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126. Oh, there's a lot of things, like,
when you pass by big movie houses,
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127. maybe we'll find one, but they have
little movie screens,
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128. where you can see clips of,
like, Z, or something like that.
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129. People watch it over and over.
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130. I've seen people,
I've checked them out. All day!
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131. I've gone back and forth
and they're still there
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132. watching the credits of a movie,
cos they don't have enough dough,
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133. but it's some entertainment,
you know?
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134. Instead, radicals across America
turned to art and music
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135. as a means of expressing
their criticism of society.
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136. They believed that instead of trying
to change the world outside
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137. the new radicalism should try
and change
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138. what was inside
people's heads,
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139. and the way to do this was through
self-expression,
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140. not collective action.
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141. U
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142. V
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143. W
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144. X
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145. Y
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146. Z
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147. But some of the Left saw that
something else was really going on -
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148. that by detaching themselves and
retreating into an ironic coolness,
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149. a whole generation were beginning
to lose touch
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150. with the reality of power.
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151. Shut up.
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152. Shut up!
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153. One of them wrote of that time,
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154. "It was the mood of the era
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155. "and the revolution was
deferred indefinitely.
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156. "And while we were dozing,
the money crept in."
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157. What's your date of birth, Larry?
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158. But one of the people who did
understand how to use this new power
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159. was Donald Trump.
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160. Trump realised that there was
now no future
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161. in building housing
for ordinary people,
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162. because all the government
grants had gone.
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163. But he saw there were other ways
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164. to get vast amounts of money
out of the state.
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165. Trump started to buy up
derelict buildings in New York
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166. and he announced that he was going
to transform them
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167. into luxury hotels
and apartments.
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168. But in return, he negotiated
the biggest tax break
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169. in New York's history,
worth $160 million.
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170. The city had to agree
because they were desperate,
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171. and the banks,
seeing a new opportunity,
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172. also started to lend him money.
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173. And Donald Trump began to transform
New York into a city for the rich,
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174. while he paid practically nothing.
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175. At the very same time, in 1975,
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176. there was a confrontation between
two powerful men in Damascus,
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177. the capital of Syria.
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178. One was Henry Kissinger,
the US Secretary of State.
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179. The other was the President
of Syria, Hafez al-Assad.
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180. The battle between the two men
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181. was going to have profound
consequences for the world.
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182. And like in New York,
it was going to be a struggle
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183. between the old idea of using
politics to change the world
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184. and a new idea that you could run
the world as a stable system.
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185. President Assad dominated Syria.
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186. The country was full of giant images
and statues that glorified him.
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187. He was brutal and ruthless,
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188. killing or imprisoning anyone
he suspected of being a threat.
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189. But Assad believed that
the violence was for a purpose.
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190. He wanted to find a way of uniting
the Arab countries
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191. and using that power
to stand up to the West.
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192. Four,
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193. three,
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194. two,
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195. one.
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196. Kissinger was also tough
and ruthless.
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197. He had started in the 1950s
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198. as an expert in the theory
of nuclear strategy.
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199. What was called
"the delicate balance of terror."
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200. It was the system that ran
the Cold War.
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201. Both sides believed
that if they attacked,
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202. the other side would immediately
launch their missiles
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203. and everyone would be annihilated.
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204. Kissinger had been one of the
models for the character
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205. of Dr Strangelove
in Stanley Kubrick's film.
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206. Mr President, I would not rule
out the chance
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207. to preserve a nucleus
of human specimens.
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208. It would be quite easy.
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209. At the bottom of some
of our deeper mineshafts.
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210. Henry was not a warm, friendly,
modest, jovial sort of person.
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211. He was thought of as one
of the more...
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212. .. anxious, temperamental,
self-conscious,
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213. ambitious, inconsiderate people
at Harvard.
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214. Kissinger saw himself
as a hard realist.
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215. He had no time for the emotional
turmoil of political ideologies.
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216. He believed that history had always
really been a struggle for power
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217. between groups and nations.
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218. But what Kissinger took
from the Cold War
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219. was a way of seeing the world
as an interconnected system,
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220. and his aim was to keep
that system in balance
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221. and prevent it from falling
into chaos.
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222. I believe that with all the
dislocations we now experience,
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223. there also exists
an extraordinary opportunity
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224. to form, for the first time in
history, a truly global society
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225. carried up by the principle
of interdependence,
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226. and if we act wisely,
and with vision,
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227. I think we can look back
to all this turmoil
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228. as the birth pangs of a more
creative and better system.
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229. If we miss the opportunity,
I think there's going to be chaos.
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230. The flight has been delayed,
we understand now.
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231. Kissinger will be arriving here
about an hour and a half from now,
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232. so we'll just
have the press informed
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233. and then we'll stay
in contact with you...
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234. And it was this idea that Kissinger
set out to impose
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235. on the chaotic politics
of the Middle East.
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236. But to manage it,
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237. he knew that he was going to have to
deal with President Assad of Syria.
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238. President Assad was convinced
that there would only ever be
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239. a real and lasting peace between
the Arabs and Israel
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240. if the Palestinian refugees were
allowed to return to their homeland.
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241. Hundreds of thousands
of Palestinians
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242. were living in exile in Syria,
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243. as well as in the Lebanon
and Jordan.
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244. Have you found that the Palestinians
here want to integrate
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245. with the Syrians at all?
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246. Oh, no. No, never.
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247. They don't want...
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248. Not here or neither in Lebanon
or in Jordan, never.
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249. No, because they want to stay as
a whole, as... Palestinian.
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250. As... They call themselves,
"Those Who Go Back" -
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251. "al-a'iduun", you say in Arabic.
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252. Assad also believed
that such a peace
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253. would strengthen the Arab world.
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254. But Kissinger thought that
strengthening the Arabs
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255. would destabilise
his balance of power.
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256. So, he set out
to do the very opposite -
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257. to fracture the power
of the Arab countries,
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258. by dividing them
and breaking their alliances,
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259. so they would
keep each other in check.
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260. Kissinger now played a double game.
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261. Or as he termed it,
"constructive ambiguity".
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262. In a series of meetings,
he persuaded Egypt
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263. to sign a separate agreement
with Israel.
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264. But at the same time, he led Assad
to believe
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265. that he was working
for a wider peace agreement,
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266. one that WOULD include the
Palestinians.
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267. In reality,
the Palestinians were ignored.
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268. They were irrelevant
to the structural balance
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269. of the global system.
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270. The hallmark of Kissinger's thinking
about international politics
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271. is its structural design.
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272. Everything is always connected
in his mind to everything else.
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273. But his first thoughts
are on that level,
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274. on this structural
global balance of power level.
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275. And as he addresses questions
of human dignity,
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276. human survival, human freedom...
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277. ..I think they tend
to come into his mind
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278. as an adjunct of the play of nations
at the power game.
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279. When Assad found out the truth,
it was too late.
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280. In a series of confrontations
with Kissinger in Damascus,
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281. Assad raged about this treachery.
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282. He told Kissinger
that what he had done
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283. would release demons hidden under
the surface of the Arab world.
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284. Kissinger described their meetings.
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285. "Assad's controlled fury," he wrote,
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286. "was all the more impressive
for its eerily cold,
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287. "seemingly unemotional, demeanour."
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288. Assad now retreated.
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289. He started to build a giant palace
that loomed over Damascus...
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290. .. and his belief that it would be
possible to transform the Arab world
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291. began to fade.
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292. A British journalist,
who knew Assad, wrote...
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293. "Assad's optimism has gone.
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294. "A trust in the future has gone.
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295. "What has emerged instead
is a brutal, vengeful Assad,
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296. "who believes in nothing
except revenge."
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297. The original dream
of the Soviet Union
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298. had been to create
a glorious new world.
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299. A world where not only the society,
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300. but the people themselves
would be transformed.
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301. They would become new and better
kinds of human beings.
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302. But by the 1980s, it was clear
that the dream had failed.
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303. The Soviet Union became instead
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304. a society where no-one believed
in anything
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305. or had any vision of the future.
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306. Those who ran the Soviet Union
had believed that they could plan
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307. and manage a new kind
of socialist society.
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308. But they had discovered that
it was impossible
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309. to control and predict everything
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310. and the plan had run out of control.
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311. But rather than reveal this,
the technocrats began to pretend
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312. that everything was still going
according to plan.
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313. And what emerged instead
was a fake version of the society.
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314. The Soviet Union became a society
where everyone knew
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315. that what their leaders said
was not real
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316. because they could see
with their own eyes
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317. that the economy was falling apart.
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318. But everybody had to play along
and pretend that it WAS real
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319. because no-one could imagine
any alternative.
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320. One Soviet writer called it
"hypernormalisation".
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321. You were so much
a part of the system
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322. that it was impossible
to see beyond it.
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323. The fakeness was hypernormal.
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324. In this stagnant world,
two brothers -
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325. called Arkady and Boris Strugatsky -
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326. became the inspiration
of a growing new dissident movement.
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327. They weren't politicians,
they were science fiction writers,
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328. and in their stories,
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329. they expressed
the strange mood that was rising up
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330. as the Soviet Empire collapsed.
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331. Their most famous book
was called Roadside Picnic.
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332. It is set in a world
that seems like the present,
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333. except there is a zone that
has been created by an alien force.
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334. People, known as "stalkers",
go into the zone.
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335. They find that nothing
is what it seems,
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336. that reality changes
minute by minute.
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337. Shadows go the wrong way.
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338. There are hidden forces
that twist your body
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339. and change the way
you think and feel.
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340. The picture the Strugatskys gave
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341. was of a world
where nothing was fixed.
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342. Where reality - both what you saw
and what you believed -
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343. had become shifting and unstable.
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344. And in 1979, the film director
Andrei Tarkovsky
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345. made a film that was based
on Roadside Picnic.
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346. He called it Stalker.
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347. I, Ronald Reagan,
do solemnly swear...
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348. .. That I will faithfully execute
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349. the office of president
of the United States.
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350. .. that I will faithfully execute
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351. the office of president
of the United States.
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352. The new president of America
had a new vision of the world.
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353. It wasn't the harsh realism
of Henry Kissinger any longer,
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354. it was different -
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355. it was a simple, moral crusade,
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356. where America had a special destiny
to fight evil
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357. and to make the world
a better place.
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358. The places and the periods
in which man has known freedom
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359. are few and far between -
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360. just scattered moments
on the span of time.
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361. And most of those moments
have been ours.
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362. The American people have a genius
for great and unselfish deeds.
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363. Into the hands of America,
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364. God has placed the destiny
of an afflicted mankind.
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365. God bless America.
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366. But this crusade
was going to lead Reagan
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367. to come face-to-face
with Henry Kissinger's legacy...
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368. .. and, above all, the vengeful fury
of President Assad of Syria.
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369. Israel was now determined
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370. to finally destroy
the power of the Palestinians.
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371. And, in 1982,
they sent a massive army
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372. to encircle the Palestinian camps
in the Lebanon.
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373. Do you know... Do you know how
strong the Israelis are?
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374. Do you know how many tanks
they have outside Beirut?
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375. Do you know how strong they are?
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376. That means
"We are not ready to surrender".
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377. Young, young, young!
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378. Keep going!
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379. Dashed into this building here
because the PLO guys with us
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380. expect that, sooner or later,
there will be a huge explosion.
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381. There've been several of these
in the last few minutes.
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382. As you can see,
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383. there's enormous damage
in all the buildings round here.
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384. Quick, quick!
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385. Two months later,
thousands of Palestinian refugees
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386. were massacred in the camps.
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387. It horrified the world.
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388. But what was even more shocking
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389. was that Israel
had allowed it to happen.
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390. Its troops had stood by and watched
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391. as a Christian Lebanese faction
murdered the Palestinians.
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392. This was the first of the massacres
we discovered yesterday.
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393. Now, 24 hours later,
the stench here is appalling.
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394. But the effects on the Israelis
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395. of what their Christian allies
did here
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396. and in dozens of other places
around this camp
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397. are going to be immense.
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398. There's always been a risk of such
massacres if Christian militiamen
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399. were allowed to come
into Palestinian camps,
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400. and the Israelis
seem to have done nothing
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401. to prevent them
coming into this one.
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402. In the face of the horror
and the growing chaos,
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403. President Reagan was forced to act.
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404. He announced that American marines
would come to Beirut
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405. to lead a peacekeeping force.
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406. Reagan insisted that
the troops were neutral.
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407. But President Assad was convinced
that there was another reality.
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408. He saw the troops as part
of the growing conspiracy
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409. between America and Israel to divide
the Middle East into factions
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410. and destroy the power of the Arabs.
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411. Assad decided to get the Americans
out of the Middle East.
Copy !req
412. And to do this, he made an alliance
Copy !req
413. with the new revolutionary force
of Ayatollah Khomeini's Iran.
Copy !req
414. And what Khomeini
could bring to Assad
Copy !req
415. was an extraordinary new weapon
that he had just created.
Copy !req
416. It was called it
"the poor man's atomic bomb".
Copy !req
417. Ayatollah Khomeini had come to power
two years before
Copy !req
418. as the leader
of the Iranian revolution.
Copy !req
419. But his hold on power
was precarious,
Copy !req
420. and Khomeini had developed a new
idea of how to fight his enemies
Copy !req
421. and defend the revolution.
Copy !req
422. Khomeini told his followers
that they could destroy themselves
Copy !req
423. in order to save the revolution
providing that, in the process,
Copy !req
424. they killed as many enemies
around them as possible.
Copy !req
425. This was completely new,
Copy !req
426. because the Koran
specifically prohibited suicide.
Copy !req
427. In the past, you became a martyr
on the battlefield
Copy !req
428. because God chose the time and place
of your death.
Copy !req
429. But Khomeini changed this.
Copy !req
430. He did it by going back to one of
the central rituals of Shia Islam.
Copy !req
431. Every year,
Shi'ites march in a procession
Copy !req
432. mourning the sacrifice
of their founder, Husayn.
Copy !req
433. As they do, they whip themselves,
Copy !req
434. symbolically re-enacting
Husayn's suffering.
Copy !req
435. Khomeini said that
the ultimate act of penitence
Copy !req
436. was not just to whip yourself,
Copy !req
437. but to kill yourself...
Copy !req
438. .. providing it was for
the greater good of the revolution.
Copy !req
439. In the name of God,
the compassionate, the merciful,
Copy !req
440. good afternoon.
Copy !req
441. "An Iraqi Soviet-made MiG-23
was shot down
Copy !req
442. "by the air-force jet fighters
of the Islamic Republic
Copy !req
443. "over the north-western Iranian
border region of Marivan
Copy !req
444. "at 10.08 hours local time,
Saturday,"
Copy !req
445. said the Joint Staff Commands
communique numbered 1710.
Copy !req
446. Khomeini had mobilised this force
Copy !req
447. when the country
was attacked by Iraq.
Copy !req
448. Iran faced almost certain defeat
Copy !req
449. because Iraq
had far superior weapons,
Copy !req
450. many of them supplied by America.
Copy !req
451. So, the revolutionaries
took tens of thousands of young boys
Copy !req
452. out of schools, put them on buses
and sent them to the front line.
Copy !req
453. Their job was to walk through
the enemies' minefields,
Copy !req
454. deliberately blowing themselves up
in order to open gaps
Copy !req
455. that would allow the Iranian army
to pass through unharmed.
Copy !req
456. It was organised suicide
on a vast scale.
Copy !req
457. This human sacrifice
was commemorated
Copy !req
458. in giant cemeteries
across the country.
Copy !req
459. Fountains flowing
with blood red-water
Copy !req
460. glorified this new kind
of martyrdom.
Copy !req
461. And it was this new idea -
Copy !req
462. of an unstoppable human weapon -
Copy !req
463. that President Assad
took from Khomeini,
Copy !req
464. and brought to the West
for the first time.
Copy !req
465. But, as it travelled,
Copy !req
466. it would mutate
into something even more deadly.
Copy !req
467. Instead of just killing yourself,
Copy !req
468. you would take explosives with you
into the heart of the enemy
Copy !req
469. and then blow yourself up,
Copy !req
470. taking dozens or even hundreds
along with you.
Copy !req
471. It would become known
as "suicide bombing".
Copy !req
472. In October 1983, two suicide bombers
Copy !req
473. drove trucks into
the US marine barracks in Beirut.
Copy !req
474. It was seeing something move
that took me out of my trance.
Copy !req
475. And then I recognised, "Oh, yes,
marines were in that building.
Copy !req
476. "A lot of marines
were in that building."
Copy !req
477. And that's when I ran down and...
Copy !req
478. And it was a black...
black marine.
Copy !req
479. He looked white.
Copy !req
480. The dust had just covered him.
Copy !req
481. The massive explosions
killed 241 Americans.
Copy !req
482. The bombers were members
of a new militant group
Copy !req
483. that no-one had heard of.
Copy !req
484. They called themselves Hezbollah
Copy !req
485. and, although many of them
were Iranian,
Copy !req
486. they were very much
under the control of Syria
Copy !req
487. and the Syrian
intelligence agencies.
Copy !req
488. President Assad was using them
as his proxies to attack America.
Copy !req
489. Whoever carried out yesterday's
bombings - Shia Muslim fanatics,
Copy !req
490. devotees of the Ayatollah Khomeini,
or whatever -
Copy !req
491. it is Syria
who profits politically.
Copy !req
492. The most significant fact is that
the dissidents live and work
Copy !req
493. with Syrian protection.
Copy !req
494. So, it is to Syria rather than to
the dissident group's guiding light,
Copy !req
495. Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran, that we
must look for an explanation
Copy !req
496. of the group's activities.
Destabilisation is Syria's
Copy !req
497. Middle-Eastern way of reminding
the world that Syria
Copy !req
498. must not be left out of plans
for the future of the area.
Copy !req
499. There are no words that can express
our sorrow and grief
Copy !req
500. for the loss of those
splendid young men
Copy !req
501. and the injury to so many others.
Copy !req
502. These deeds make so evident
the bestial nature
Copy !req
503. of those who would assume power
Copy !req
504. if they could have their way
and drive us out of that area.
Copy !req
505. But despite his words,
within four months,
Copy !req
506. President Reagan withdrew all the
American troops from the Lebanon.
Copy !req
507. The Secretary of State
George Shultz explained.
Copy !req
508. "We became paralysed by the
complexity that we faced," he said.
Copy !req
509. So, the Americans turned and left.
Copy !req
510. For President Assad,
it was an extraordinary achievement.
Copy !req
511. He was the only Arab leader to have
defeated the Americans
Copy !req
512. and forced them
to leave the Middle East.
Copy !req
513. He had done it by using
the new force of suicide bombing.
Copy !req
514. A force that, once unleashed,
Copy !req
515. was going to spread
with unstoppable power.
Copy !req
516. But at this point,
both Assad and the Iranians
Copy !req
517. thought that they could control it.
Copy !req
518. And what gave it this
extraordinary power
Copy !req
519. was that it held out the dream
Copy !req
520. of transcending the corruptions
of the world
Copy !req
521. and entering a new and better realm.
Copy !req
522. One should defend
the realm of Islam and Muslims
Copy !req
523. against heretics and invaders.
Copy !req
524. And to fulfil this duty, one should
even sacrifice one's life.
Copy !req
525. We believe that martyrs can overlook
our deeds from the other world.
Copy !req
526. It means that, after death,
Copy !req
527. the martyr lives and can still
witness this world.
Copy !req
528. By the middle of the 1980s,
the banks were rising up
Copy !req
529. and becoming ever more powerful
in America.
Copy !req
530. What had started ten years before
in New York,
Copy !req
531. the idea that the financial system
could run society,
Copy !req
532. was spreading.
Copy !req
533. But unlike older systems of power,
it was mostly invisible.
Copy !req
534. A writer called William Gibson
Copy !req
535. tried to dramatise what was
happening
Copy !req
536. in a powerful, imaginative way,
in a series of novels.
Copy !req
537. Gibson had noticed how the banks
and the new corporations
Copy !req
538. were beginning to link themselves
together through computer systems.
Copy !req
539. What they were creating was
a series of giant networks of
Copy !req
540. information that were invisible
to ordinary people
Copy !req
541. and to politicians.
Copy !req
542. But those networks gave
the corporations
Copy !req
543. extraordinary new powers of control.
Copy !req
544. 'Good morning. South-West
Development. May I help you?'
Copy !req
545. Gibson gave this new world a name.
Copy !req
546. He called it "cyberspace"
Copy !req
547. and his novels described a future
that was dangerous and frightening.
Copy !req
548. Hackers could literally enter
into cyberspace and as they did,
Copy !req
549. they travelled through systems
that were so powerful
Copy !req
550. that they could reach out and crush
intruders by destroying their minds.
Copy !req
551. In cyberspace, there were no laws
and no politicians to protect you.
Copy !req
552. Just raw, brutal corporate power.
Copy !req
553. But then, a strange thing happened.
Copy !req
554. A new group of visionaries
in America
Copy !req
555. took Gibson's idea of
a hidden, secret world
Copy !req
556. and transformed it into something
completely different.
Copy !req
557. They turned it
into a dream of a new utopia.
Copy !req
558. They were the technological utopians
who were rising up
Copy !req
559. on the West Coast of America.
Copy !req
560. They turned Gibson's idea
on its head.
Copy !req
561. Instead of cyberspace
being a frightening place,
Copy !req
562. dominated by powerful corporations,
Copy !req
563. they reinvented it
as the very opposite.
Copy !req
564. A new, safe world where radical
dreams could come true.
Copy !req
565. Ten years before, faced by the
complexity of real politics,
Copy !req
566. the radicals had given up on
the idea of changing the world.
Copy !req
567. But now, the computer utopians
saw, in cyberspace,
Copy !req
568. an alternative reality.
Copy !req
569. A place they could retreat to away
from the harsh right-wing politics
Copy !req
570. that now dominated Reagan's America.
Copy !req
571. The roots of this vision lay back
in the counterculture
Copy !req
572. of the 1960s,
and, above all, with LSD.
Copy !req
573. We've got some more acid over here
if you want to go ahead.
Copy !req
574. Many of those who had
taken LSD in the '60s
Copy !req
575. were convinced that it was more
than just another drug,
Copy !req
576. that it opened human perception
Copy !req
577. and allowed people to see
new realities
Copy !req
578. that were normally
hidden from them.
Copy !req
579. See, the ones that have white
in them are really great.
Copy !req
580. I feel like a rabbit.
Copy !req
581. It freed them from the narrow,
limited view of the world
Copy !req
582. that was imposed on them by
politicians and those in power.
Copy !req
583. In the United States, in the next,
five, ten, 15 years,
Copy !req
584. you're going to see more and more
people taking LSD and making it
Copy !req
585. a part of their lives, so there will
be an LSD country within 15 years.
Copy !req
586. An LSD society, there will
be less interest
Copy !req
587. in, obviously, warfare,
Copy !req
588. in power politics.
Copy !req
589. You know, politics today is
a disease, it's a real addiction.
Copy !req
590. Politics, politics, politics,
politics.
Copy !req
591. Don't politick, don't vote -
these are old men's games.
Copy !req
592. Impotent and senile old man
that want to put you
Copy !req
593. onto their old chess games
of war and power.
Copy !req
594. 20 years later, the new networks
of machines seemed to offer
Copy !req
595. a way to construct
a real alternate reality.
Copy !req
596. Not just one that was
chemically induced,
Copy !req
597. but a space that actually existed
Copy !req
598. in a parallel dimension
to the real world.
Copy !req
599. And like with acid,
Copy !req
600. cyberspace could be a place where
you would be liberated from the old,
Copy !req
601. corrupt hierarchies of politics and
power and explore new ways of being.
Copy !req
602. One of the leading exponents of this
idea was called John Perry Barlow.
Copy !req
603. In the '60s, he had written songs
for the Grateful Dead
Copy !req
604. and been part of the acid
counterculture.
Copy !req
605. Now, he organised
what he called "cyberthons",
Copy !req
606. to try and bring the cyberspace
movement together.
Copy !req
607. Well, you know, the cyberthon
as it was originally conceived
Copy !req
608. was supposed to be...
Copy !req
609. .. the '90s equivalent of
the acid test
Copy !req
610. and we had thought to involve
some of the same personnel.
Copy !req
611. You and I and Timmy should sit down
and talk. OK. That is good.
Copy !req
612. And it immediately acquired
a financial quality
Copy !req
613. or a commercial quality
that was initially
Copy !req
614. a little unsettling
to an old hippy like me,
Copy !req
615. but as soon as I saw it actually
working, then I thought,
Copy !req
616. "Ah, well, if you're going to have
an acid test for the '90s,
Copy !req
617. "money better be involved."
Copy !req
618. Instead of having a glass barrier
that separates you -
Copy !req
619. your mind - from the mind of
the computer,
Copy !req
620. the computer pulls us inside
and creates a world for us.
Copy !req
621. Incorporates everything
that could be incorporated.
Copy !req
622. It incorporates experience itself.
Copy !req
623. Barlow then wrote a manifesto
Copy !req
624. that he called A Declaration Of
Independence Of Cyberspace.
Copy !req
625. It was addressed to all politicians,
Copy !req
626. telling them to keep out
of this new world.
Copy !req
627. It was going to be incredibly
influential,
Copy !req
628. because what Barlow did was give
a powerful picture of the internet
Copy !req
629. not as a network controlled
by giant corporations,
Copy !req
630. but, instead, as a kind
of magical, free place.
Copy !req
631. An alternative to the
old systems of power.
Copy !req
632. It was a vision that would come
to dominate the internet
Copy !req
633. over the next 20 years.
Copy !req
634. Governments of the industrial world,
Copy !req
635. cyberspace does not lie
within your borders.
Copy !req
636. We are creating
a world where anyone,
Copy !req
637. anywhere, may express his or her
beliefs,
Copy !req
638. no matter how singular,
Copy !req
639. without fear of being coerced
Copy !req
640. into silence or conformity.
Copy !req
641. I declare the global social space
we are building
Copy !req
642. to be naturally independent
Copy !req
643. of the tyrannies you seek
to impose on us.
Copy !req
644. We will create a civilisation
of the mind in cyberspace.
Copy !req
645. May it be more humane and fair
Copy !req
646. than the world your governments
have made before.
Copy !req
647. It's begun.
Copy !req
648. This is the key to a new order.
Copy !req
649. This code disk means freedom.
Copy !req
650. But two young hackers in New York
thought that Barlow
Copy !req
651. was describing a fantasy world,
Copy !req
652. that his vision bore
no relationship at all
Copy !req
653. to what was really emerging online.
Copy !req
654. They were cult figures
on the early online scene
Copy !req
655. and their fans followed
and recorded them.
Copy !req
656. They called themselves Phiber Optik
and Acid Phreak
Copy !req
657. and they spent their time exploring
and breaking in
Copy !req
658. to giant computer networks
that they knew
Copy !req
659. were the hard realities
of modern digital power.
Copy !req
660. My specific instance, I was charged
with conspiracy
Copy !req
661. to commit a few dozen "overacts",
they called them.
Copy !req
662. Among a number of things having to
do with computer trespass and...
Copy !req
663. and I guess computer eavesdropping,
interception.
Copy !req
664. Unauthorised access to federal
interest computers,
Copy !req
665. which is pretty vague law.
Copy !req
666. Communications network
computers and so on.
Copy !req
667. In a notorious public debate online,
the two hackers attacked Barlow.
Copy !req
668. What infuriated them most
was Barlow's insistence
Copy !req
669. that there was no hierarchy
Copy !req
670. or controlling powers in
the new cyber world.
Copy !req
671. The hackers set out to demonstrate
that he was wrong.
Copy !req
672. Acid Phreak hacked into
the computers of
Copy !req
673. a giant corporation called TRW.
Copy !req
674. TRW had originally built the systems
Copy !req
675. that ran the Cold War
for the US military.
Copy !req
676. They had helped create the
delicate balance of terror.
Copy !req
677. Now, TRW had adapted their
computers to run a new system,
Copy !req
678. that of credit and debt.
Copy !req
679. Their computers gathered up the
credit data of millions of Americans
Copy !req
680. and were being used by the banks to
decide individuals' credit ratings.
Copy !req
681. The hackers broke into the
TRW network,
Copy !req
682. stole Barlow's credit history
and published it online.
Copy !req
683. The hackers were demonstrating
the growing power of finance.
Copy !req
684. How the companies that ran the new
systems of credit
Copy !req
685. knew more and more about you,
Copy !req
686. and, increasingly, used that
information to control your destiny.
Copy !req
687. But the system that was allowing
this to happen
Copy !req
688. were the new
giant networks of information
Copy !req
689. connected through computer servers.
Copy !req
690. The hackers were questioning whether
Barlow's utopian rhetoric
Copy !req
691. about cyberspace might really be
a convenient camouflage
Copy !req
692. hiding the emergence of a new and
growing power
Copy !req
693. that was way beyond politics.
Copy !req
694. But cyberspace was not the only
imaginary story being created.
Copy !req
695. Faced with the humiliating defeat
in the Lebanon,
Copy !req
696. President Reagan's government
was desperate to shore up
Copy !req
697. the vision of a moral world
Copy !req
698. where a good America
struggled against evil.
Copy !req
699. And to do this they were going to
create a simple villain.
Copy !req
700. An imaginary enemy, one that would
free them
Copy !req
701. from the paralysing complexity of
real Middle-Eastern politics.
Copy !req
702. The perfect candidate was
waiting in the wings.
Copy !req
703. Colonel Gaddafi, the ruler of Libya.
Copy !req
704. The Americans were going to
ruthlessly use Colonel Gaddafi
Copy !req
705. to create a fake terrorist
mastermind.
Copy !req
706. And Gaddafi was going to happily
play along,
Copy !req
707. because it would turn him into
a famous global figure.
Copy !req
708. Colonel Gaddafi had taken power
in a coup in the 1970s
Copy !req
709. but from the very start,
Copy !req
710. he was convinced that he was more
than just the leader of one country.
Copy !req
711. He believed that he was
an international revolutionary
Copy !req
712. whose destiny was to challenge
the power of the West.
Copy !req
713. Gentlemen, the Queen.
Copy !req
714. When he was a young officer,
Copy !req
715. Gaddafi had been sent
to England for training
Copy !req
716. and he had detested
the patronising racism
Copy !req
717. that he said he had found
at the heart of British society.
Copy !req
718. Yes, I attended a course.
Copy !req
719. I had been in England in 1966
from February to August.
Copy !req
720. You had the best months.
Copy !req
721. I was in Beaconsfield,
Copy !req
722. a village called Beaconsfield,
Copy !req
723. in an army school.
Copy !req
724. In fact, we were ill-treated in that
place from some British officers.
Copy !req
725. I think the officers were Jews,
Copy !req
726. maybe Jews.
Copy !req
727. Ill-treated in what sort of way?
Copy !req
728. In many ways.
Copy !req
729. They ill-treat us every time.
Copy !req
730. By being rude or by bullying or...?
Copy !req
731. In their own behaviour towards us,
they ill-treated us.
Copy !req
732. They hate us in there
Copy !req
733. because of colonisation.
Copy !req
734. It is the result of colonising.
Copy !req
735. Once in power, Gaddafi had developed
his own revolutionary theory,
Copy !req
736. which he called
the Third Universal Theory.
Copy !req
737. It was an alternative, he said,
to communism and capitalism.
Copy !req
738. He published it in a green book,
Copy !req
739. but practically no-one read it.
Copy !req
740. He had sent money and weapons
to the IRA in Ireland
Copy !req
741. to help them overthrow
the British ruling class.
Copy !req
742. But all the other Arab leaders
rejected him and his ideas.
Copy !req
743. They thought that he was mad.
Copy !req
744. And by the mid-1980s,
Gaddafi was an isolated figure
Copy !req
745. with no friends
and no global influence.
Copy !req
746. Then, suddenly, that changed.
Copy !req
747. In December 1985,
Copy !req
748. terrorists attacked Rome
and Vienna airports simultaneously,
Copy !req
749. killing 19 people,
Copy !req
750. including five Americans.
Copy !req
751. There was growing pressure on
President Reagan to retaliate.
Copy !req
752. It's time to rename
your State Department
Copy !req
753. the Capitulation Department.
Copy !req
754. Get off of your stick, Mr President.
Copy !req
755. The American people are sick
and tired of being kicked around.
Copy !req
756. You talk tough,
Copy !req
757. let's see you use some
of these billions and billions
Copy !req
758. and billions of dollars' worth
of weapons
Copy !req
759. that you've asked us to approve.
Copy !req
760. Your words are cheap talk.
Copy !req
761. President Reagan
immediately announced
Copy !req
762. that Colonel Gaddafi was
definitely behind the attacks.
Copy !req
763. These murderers
could not carry out their crimes
Copy !req
764. without the sanctuary and support
Copy !req
765. provided by regimes
such as Colonel Gaddafi's in Libya.
Copy !req
766. The Rome and Vienna murders
are only the latest
Copy !req
767. in a series of brutal terrorist acts
committed with Gaddafi's backing.
Copy !req
768. But the European security services
who investigated the attacks
Copy !req
769. were convinced that Libya
was not involved at all
Copy !req
770. and that the mastermind behind
the attacks was, in fact, Syria -
Copy !req
771. that the terrorists
had been directed
Copy !req
772. by the Syrian intelligence agencies.
Copy !req
773. But the Americans say that
the attack at Rome Airport
Copy !req
774. was organised by Gaddafi,
not by Damascus. What do you say?
Copy !req
775. No, we don't have any evidence...
You have no evidence?
Copy !req
776. .. supporting such an... affirmation.
Copy !req
777. The only evidence we have
Copy !req
778. shows a Syrian connection.
Copy !req
779. You say that it was Libya
and the President
Copy !req
780. said the evidence of Libya's
culpability was irrefutable. Yeah.
Copy !req
781. But the Italian authorities to whom
I've spoken say emphatically
Copy !req
782. on the record that their
investigations have shown
Copy !req
783. that it was entirely
masterminded by Syria.
Copy !req
784. I don't agree with that at all.
Copy !req
785. Well, they interrogated
the surviving terrorists.
Copy !req
786. I must just say
I don't agree with that.
Copy !req
787. But you've no evidence that Libya
was in on the planning either.
Copy !req
788. Our evidence on Libya is
circumstantial, but very strong.
Copy !req
789. But why does the President
then say it's "irrefutable",
Copy !req
790. if you call it "circumstantial"?
Copy !req
791. Well, people can be convicted
and sentenced in our courts
Copy !req
792. on circumstantial evidence.
Copy !req
793. But what made it
even more confusing
Copy !req
794. was that although there
seemed to be no evidence
Copy !req
795. that Gaddafi had been
behind the attacks,
Copy !req
796. he made no attempt
to deny the allegations.
Copy !req
797. Instead, he went the other way
Copy !req
798. and turned the crisis
into a global drama...
Copy !req
799. It is not a time of saying.
Copy !req
800. It is a time of war,
Copy !req
801. a time of confrontation.
Copy !req
802. .. threatening suicide attacks
against America.
Copy !req
803. Gaddafi now started to play a role
Copy !req
804. that was going
to become very familiar.
Copy !req
805. He grabbed the publicity
that had been given to him
Copy !req
806. by the Americans
and used it dramatically.
Copy !req
807. He promoted himself as
an international revolutionary
Copy !req
808. who would help to liberate
oppressed peoples around the world,
Copy !req
809. even the blacks in America.
Copy !req
810. Gaddafi arranged
for a live satellite link
Copy !req
811. to a mass meeting of
the Nation Of Islam in Chicago.
Copy !req
812. Brothers and sisters,
Copy !req
813. it is with great honour and
privilege that I present to you
Copy !req
814. the leader of the
al-Fateh Revolution from Libya,
Copy !req
815. our brother Muammar al-Gaddafi.
Copy !req
816. Gaddafi told them that Libya
was now their ally
Copy !req
817. in their struggle against
white America.
Copy !req
818. ..To express my full support
and support of my country
Copy !req
819. to your struggle for freedom,
for emancipation.
Copy !req
820. Gaddafi promised that
he would supply weapons
Copy !req
821. to create a black army in America
of 400,000 men.
Copy !req
822. "If white America refuses
to accept blacks as US citizens,"
Copy !req
823. he told them,
"it must therefore be destroyed."
Copy !req
824. Gaddafi also invited
a group of German rocket scientists
Copy !req
825. to come to Libya
to build him a rocket.
Copy !req
826. He insisted that
it had no military purpose.
Copy !req
827. Libya was now going to
explore outer space.
Copy !req
828. I think it is peaceful and civil...
Copy !req
829. Civilian?
Copy !req
830. .. civilian activity
Copy !req
831. for investigation of space
Copy !req
832. and something like this
Copy !req
833. and it has nothing to do
with any military things.
Copy !req
834. But no-one believed him.
Copy !req
835. Journalists warned that Gaddafi was
really preparing to attack Europe,
Copy !req
836. vividly dramatising
the new danger.
Copy !req
837. That is something like this
Copy !req
838. which goes that way
to put something into space.
Copy !req
839. But the same device tilted, say,
to an angle of 45 degrees
Copy !req
840. could, of course,
become something very different -
Copy !req
841. a missile possibly
carrying a warhead.
Copy !req
842. That would put Libya
within range of an enormous area.
Copy !req
843. A chilling proposition
with its range of 2,000km.
Copy !req
844. The Americans and Gaddafi
now became locked together
Copy !req
845. in a cycle of mutual reinforcement.
Copy !req
846. In the process,
a powerful new image was created
Copy !req
847. that was going to capture
the imagination of the West.
Copy !req
848. Gaddafi became
a global supervillain,
Copy !req
849. at the head of
what was called a "rogue state" -
Copy !req
850. a madman who threatened
the stability of the world.
Copy !req
851. And Gaddafi was loving
every minute of it.
Copy !req
852. So, you think, in the past,
Copy !req
853. his decisions sometimes
have been taken too quickly...
Copy !req
854. Maybe, maybe.
.. on world affairs? Maybe.
Copy !req
855. I think, sometimes, that is what
has made people in the world
Copy !req
856. nervous of you, perhaps? Maybe.
Copy !req
857. Then, there was
another terrorist attack
Copy !req
858. at a discotheque in West Berlin.
Copy !req
859. A bomb killed an American soldier
and injured hundreds.
Copy !req
860. The Americans released
what they said were intercepts
Copy !req
861. by the National Security Agency
Copy !req
862. that proved that Colonel Gaddafi
was behind the bombing
Copy !req
863. and a dossier that they said proved
that he was also the mastermind
Copy !req
864. behind a whole range
of other attacks.
Copy !req
865. President Reagan
ordered the Pentagon
Copy !req
866. to prepare to bomb Libya.
Copy !req
867. But again, there were doubts -
Copy !req
868. this time, within the
American Government itself.
Copy !req
869. There were concerns
that analysts were being pressured
Copy !req
870. to make a case
that didn't really exist...
Copy !req
871. .. and to do it, they were taking
Gaddafi's rhetoric about himself
Copy !req
872. as a global revolutionary
and his manic ravings
Copy !req
873. and then re-presenting
them as fact.
Copy !req
874. And, in the process, together,
Copy !req
875. the Americans and Gaddafi were
constructing a fictional world.
Copy !req
876. The analysts were certainly,
I'm convinced...
Copy !req
877. pressured into developing
a prima facie case
Copy !req
878. against the Libyan Government.
Copy !req
879. From the somewhat
incoherent ravings of a maniac,
Copy !req
880. both interceptions
of a clandestine nature
Copy !req
881. and interceptions of an open radio
broadcast or whatever,
Copy !req
882. as well as other sources,
quotations of his,
Copy !req
883. one can assemble
a neatly-put-together package
Copy !req
884. demonstrating that the man
had violent interests
Copy !req
885. against the United States
and its European allies.
Copy !req
886. The European intelligence agencies
Copy !req
887. told the Americans
that they were wrong,
Copy !req
888. that it was Syria that was
behind the bombing, not Libya.
Copy !req
889. But the Americans
had decided to attack Libya
Copy !req
890. because they couldn't face
the dangerous consequences
Copy !req
891. of attacking Syria.
Copy !req
892. Instead, they went for Gaddafi,
Copy !req
893. a man without friends or allies.
Copy !req
894. Libya had less downsided
consequences, if you will.
Copy !req
895. There's less Arab support
for Gaddafi,
Copy !req
896. we figured there would be less
Soviet support for Gaddafi.
Copy !req
897. There's no question that Libya was
more vulnerable than Syria and Iran.
Copy !req
898. He was a soft target? And that
is certainly an element, of course.
Copy !req
899. In April 1986,
the Americans attacked Libya.
Copy !req
900. Their targets included
Colonel Gaddafi's own house.
Copy !req
901. Immediately after the attack,
Copy !req
902. Gaddafi appeared in the ruins
to describe what had happened.
Copy !req
903. The family
were asleep and my wife
Copy !req
904. was, that day, tied down to the bed
Copy !req
905. because she had a slipped disc.
Copy !req
906. I tried to rescue the children
Copy !req
907. and the house started to collapse,
Copy !req
908. as you can see.
Copy !req
909. And the bombs started to land.
Copy !req
910. They concentrated
on the children's room
Copy !req
911. so that they would kill
all the children.
Copy !req
912. Our small adopted daughter
was killed
Copy !req
913. and two of our children
were injured.
Copy !req
914. But, yet again,
Gaddafi might have been lying.
Copy !req
915. Ever since then,
Copy !req
916. there have been rumours that his
adopted daughter actually survived.
Copy !req
917. But many other children
were killed in the raid
Copy !req
918. because the American bombing
was so inaccurate.
Copy !req
919. Gaddafi realised that
the attention of the whole world
Copy !req
920. was now focused on him
Copy !req
921. and he grabbed the moment to promote
his own revolutionary theory,
Copy !req
922. The Third Way, as a
global alternative to democracy.
Copy !req
923. I feel that
I'm really responsible
Copy !req
924. for conveying the Third Way theory
and the Green Book
Copy !req
925. to the rising generations, to the
young American and British people,
Copy !req
926. so that we can rescue America
and Britain
Copy !req
927. and these generations
of young people from this theory,
Copy !req
928. this electoral party theory
Copy !req
929. which enabled an imbecile
like Reagan
Copy !req
930. to rule the mightiest power on Earth
Copy !req
931. and use it to destroy
other people's homes
Copy !req
932. and enabled a harlot like Thatcher
to rule a great nation like Britain.
Copy !req
933. Wow, look at that.
What the heck is that?
Copy !req
934. Oh, my God, look at that.
Copy !req
935. Holy crap!
Copy !req
936. It's just moving really slowly. Wow!
Copy !req
937. Look, look, look! Come here,
come here! What is it doing?
Copy !req
938. What the heck?
Copy !req
939. Guys, it's...
Copy !req
940. Whoa! Oh, my gosh!
Copy !req
941. Wow!
Copy !req
942. What is happening?
Dude, what is happening?
Copy !req
943. What is going on?
Oh, my gosh!
Copy !req
944. Oh, my God, guys!
Guys, is that a freaking UFO?
Copy !req
945. Wait, can you get a good video?
What is it? What the hell?
Copy !req
946. In the 1980s, more and more people
in the United States
Copy !req
947. reported seeing unexplained objects
and lights in the sky.
Copy !req
948. At the same time,
investigators who believed in UFOs
Copy !req
949. revealed that they had discovered
top-secret government documents
Copy !req
950. that stated that alien craft
had visited Earth.
Copy !req
951. The documents had been hidden
for 20 years
Copy !req
952. and they seemed to prove that
there had been a giant cover-up.
Copy !req
953. But, actually, the reality
was even stranger.
Copy !req
954. The American Government
might have been making it all up,
Copy !req
955. that they had created
a fake conspiracy
Copy !req
956. to deliberately mislead
the population.
Copy !req
957. The lights that people
imagined were UFOs
Copy !req
958. may, in reality, have been
new high-technology weapons
Copy !req
959. that the US Government were testing.
Copy !req
960. The government
had developed the weapons
Copy !req
961. because they, in turn,
Copy !req
962. imagined that the Soviet Union
was far stronger than it was
Copy !req
963. and still wanted to conquer
the world.
Copy !req
964. The government wanted
to keep the weapons secret,
Copy !req
965. but they couldn't always hide
their appearance in the skies
Copy !req
966. so it is alleged that they chose
a number of people to use
Copy !req
967. to spread the rumour that these
were really alien visitations.
Copy !req
968. One of those chosen
was called Paul Bennewitz
Copy !req
969. who lived outside
a giant air base in New Mexico
Copy !req
970. and had noticed strange things
going on.
Copy !req
971. Years later,
Copy !req
972. I sat down with Paul at dinner
Copy !req
973. and told Paul exactly
that everything we did
Copy !req
974. was a sanctioned counterintelligence
operation to convince him
Copy !req
975. that what he was seeing was UFOs
Copy !req
976. and that what we didn't want him
to know was
Copy !req
977. that he had tapped
into something on the base
Copy !req
978. and we didn't want him
to ever disclose that.
Copy !req
979. We kind of planted the seed in Paul
Copy !req
980. that what he was seeing
and what he was hearing
Copy !req
981. and what he was collecting
was, in fact,
Copy !req
982. probably, maybe, UFOs.
Copy !req
983. Bennewitz and others
chosen by the agency
Copy !req
984. were, it is alleged,
given a series of forged documents.
Copy !req
985. Many of them were top-secret memos
by the military
Copy !req
986. describing sightings of
unidentified aerial vehicles.
Copy !req
987. The documents spread like wildfire
Copy !req
988. and they formed the basis
for the wave of belief in UFOs
Copy !req
989. that would spread through
America in the 1990s.
Copy !req
990. What the fuck is that? That's a...
Copy !req
991. That's crazy, bro.
Copy !req
992. Is that that space, uh...?
Copy !req
993. And it also fuelled
the wider growing belief
Copy !req
994. that governments lied to you -
Copy !req
995. that conspiracies were real.
Copy !req
996. What the Reagan administration
were doing,
Copy !req
997. both with Colonel Gaddafi
and with the UFOs,
Copy !req
998. was a blurring of fact and fiction
Copy !req
999. but it was part of
an even broader programme.
Copy !req
1000. The President's advisers
had given it a name -
Copy !req
1001. they called it
"perception management"
Copy !req
1002. and it became a central part
of the American Government
Copy !req
1003. during the 1980s.
Copy !req
1004. The aim was to tell dramatic stories
that grabbed the public imagination,
Copy !req
1005. not just about the Middle East,
Copy !req
1006. but about Central America
Copy !req
1007. and the Soviet Union
Copy !req
1008. and it didn't matter
if the stories were true or not,
Copy !req
1009. providing they distracted people
and you, the politician,
Copy !req
1010. from having to deal with
Copy !req
1011. the intractable complexities
of the real world.
Copy !req
1012. Reality became less and less
Copy !req
1013. of an important factor
in American politics.
Copy !req
1014. It wasn't what was real that was
driving anything
Copy !req
1015. or the facts driving anything.
Copy !req
1016. It was how you could turn those
facts or twist those facts
Copy !req
1017. or even make up the facts to make
your opponent look bad.
Copy !req
1018. So, perception management became
a device
Copy !req
1019. and the facts could be twisted.
Anything could be anything.
Copy !req
1020. It becomes how can you manipulate
the American people?
Copy !req
1021. And, in the process, reality
becomes what?
Copy !req
1022. Reality becomes simply something
to play with to achieve that end.
Copy !req
1023. Reality is not important
in this context.
Copy !req
1024. Reality is simply something
that you handle.
Copy !req
1025. But something was about to happen
that would demonstrate dramatically
Copy !req
1026. just how far the American Government
had detached from reality.
Copy !req
1027. The Soviet Empire was about
to implode.
Copy !req
1028. And no-one, none of the
politicians,
Copy !req
1029. or the journalists,
Copy !req
1030. or the think tank experts,
Copy !req
1031. or the economists,
Copy !req
1032. or the academics saw it coming.
Copy !req
1033. That's it! Whoo!
Copy !req
1034. Get ready to work out.
Copy !req
1035. The collapse of the Soviet Union
Copy !req
1036. also had a powerful effect
on the West.
Copy !req
1037. For many, it symbolised the final
failure of the dream
Copy !req
1038. that politics could be used to build
a new kind of world.
Copy !req
1039. What was going to emerge instead
was a new system that had nothing
Copy !req
1040. to do with politics.
Copy !req
1041. A system whose aim was not to try
and change things,
Copy !req
1042. but rather, to manage
a post-political world.
Copy !req
1043. One of the first people to describe
this dramatic change
Copy !req
1044. was a left-wing German political
thinker called Ulrich Beck.
Copy !req
1045. Beck said that any politician who
believed that they could take
Copy !req
1046. control of society, and drive it
forward to build
Copy !req
1047. a better future, was now
seen as dangerous.
Copy !req
1048. In the past, politicians might have
been able to do this.
Copy !req
1049. But now they were faced with what
he called "a runaway world."
Copy !req
1050. Where things were
so complex and interconnected,
Copy !req
1051. and modern technologies
so potentially dangerous
Copy !req
1052. that it was impossible to predict
the outcomes of anything you did.
Copy !req
1053. The catalogue of environmental
disasters proved this.
Copy !req
1054. Politicians would have to give up
any idea of trying to change
Copy !req
1055. the world.
Copy !req
1056. Instead, their new aim would be
to try and predict the dangers
Copy !req
1057. in the future, and then, find ways
to avoid those risks.
Copy !req
1058. Although Beck came
from the political left,
Copy !req
1059. the world he saw coming was deeply
conservative.
Copy !req
1060. The picture he gave
Copy !req
1061. was of a political class reduced to
trying to steer society
Copy !req
1062. into a dark and frightening future.
Copy !req
1063. Constantly peering forward
Copy !req
1064. and trying to see the risks
coming towards them.
Copy !req
1065. Their only aim, to avoid those risks
Copy !req
1066. and keep society stable.
Copy !req
1067. It only lasted for a few seconds
so you were basically shocked,
Copy !req
1068. you really didn't know what
was going on at the time.
Copy !req
1069. Where were you in the building
and where was the explosion?
Copy !req
1070. Oh, my God!
Copy !req
1071. But a system that could
anticipate the future
Copy !req
1072. and keep society stable was already
being built,
Copy !req
1073. pieced together
from all kinds of different,
Copy !req
1074. and sometimes surprising, sources.
Copy !req
1075. All of them outside politics.
Copy !req
1076. One part of it was taking shape
in a tiny town
Copy !req
1077. in the far north-west of the United
States called East Wenatchee.
Copy !req
1078. It was a giant computer
Copy !req
1079. whose job was to make
the future predictable.
Copy !req
1080. The man building it was
a banker called Larry Fink.
Copy !req
1081. Back in 1986,
Copy !req
1082. Mr Fink's career had collapsed.
Copy !req
1083. Shoot!
Copy !req
1084. He lost $100 million in a deal
and had been sacked.
Copy !req
1085. He became determined
it wouldn't happen again.
Copy !req
1086. Fink started a company called
BlackRock and built
Copy !req
1087. a computer he called Aladdin.
Copy !req
1088. It is housed in a series
of large sheds
Copy !req
1089. in the apple orchards
outside Wenatchee.
Copy !req
1090. Fink's aim was to use the computer
to predict, with certainty,
Copy !req
1091. what the risk of any deal
or investment was going to be.
Copy !req
1092. The computer constantly
monitors the world
Copy !req
1093. and it take things that it sees
happening,
Copy !req
1094. and then, compares them to events
in the past.
Copy !req
1095. It can do this because it has,
in its memory, a vast history
Copy !req
1096. of the past 50 years. Not just
financial, but all kinds of events.
Copy !req
1097. Out of the millions and millions
of correlations,
Copy !req
1098. the computer
then spots possible disasters,
Copy !req
1099. possible dangers lying in the
future
Copy !req
1100. and moves the investments
to avoid any radical change
Copy !req
1101. and keep the system stable.
Copy !req
1102. Today, I'm going
to deliver 1.8 million reports.
Copy !req
1103. Execute 25,000 trades.
Copy !req
1104. And avert 3,000 disasters.
Copy !req
1105. I'm going to monitor interest rates
in Europe.
Copy !req
1106. Silver prices in Asia.
Droughts in the Midwest.
Copy !req
1107. I'm going to witness 4 billion
shares change hands on the
Copy !req
1108. New York Stock Exchange.
Copy !req
1109. And record the effects
on 14 trillion in assets
Copy !req
1110. across 20,000 portfolios.
Copy !req
1111. I am Aladdin. I am Aladdin.
Copy !req
1112. And, today, I'll find the numbers
behind the numbers.
Copy !req
1113. I will see the trends the models
don't.
Copy !req
1114. The connections. The risks.
Copy !req
1115. I am Aladdin. I am Aladdin, and I
will get the data right.
Copy !req
1116. I am 25 million lines of code.
Copy !req
1117. Written by hundreds of people.
Copy !req
1118. Across two decades.
Copy !req
1119. I'm smarter than any algorithm.
Copy !req
1120. More powerful than any processor.
Copy !req
1121. Because I am Aladdin.
Copy !req
1122. Because I am Aladdin.
Copy !req
1123. I am Aladdin.
Copy !req
1124. I am Aladdin...
Copy !req
1125. Aladdin has proved to be
incredibly successful.
Copy !req
1126. The assets it guides and controls
Copy !req
1127. now amount to $15 trillion,
Copy !req
1128. which is 7% of the world's
total wealth.
Copy !req
1129. But Wenatchee
was also a dramatic example
Copy !req
1130. of another kind of craving
Copy !req
1131. for stability and reassurance.
Copy !req
1132. More of its citizens
took Prozac
Copy !req
1133. than practically
any other town in America.
Copy !req
1134. When a person's central nervous
system is changed by an SSRI,
Copy !req
1135. with that medicine they will view
things differently
Copy !req
1136. and they will be strangers.
Copy !req
1137. They look at things differently.
Copy !req
1138. I have a chemical up here that
changes me.
Copy !req
1139. I think differently.
Copy !req
1140. For me it was like walking around
like this for my whole life
Copy !req
1141. and really not knowing that I was
near-sighted. I mean, really.
Copy !req
1142. I mean, no-one had ever offered
me glasses.
Copy !req
1143. And then, all of a sudden,
here comes somebody that says,
Copy !req
1144. "OK, now try these on.
Try this Prozac on."
Copy !req
1145. And I tried it on and for the
first time in my life I went,
Copy !req
1146. "Whoa! Is this the way
reality really is?"
Copy !req
1147. Your perception can be changed
and it's frightening
Copy !req
1148. and it's scary to people.
Copy !req
1149. It speaks of science fiction almost.
Copy !req
1150. Well, the medicine just kind of lets
you listen to what needs to go on.
Copy !req
1151. And then your doctor,
every time you come back, says,
Copy !req
1152. "You're looking so much better."
Copy !req
1153. And then every time I go in he goes,
Copy !req
1154. "You're so beautiful." You know?
Copy !req
1155. He isn't even sucking up.
He's being nice, you know?
Copy !req
1156. "You're beautiful, you're nice,
you're friendly.
Copy !req
1157. "You've got so much going for you."
I think, "Yeah, I do."
Copy !req
1158. So, I go out and tell my friends,
Copy !req
1159. "I feel so much better
about myself."
Copy !req
1160. Mom goes out, "Oh, I feel so much
better about myself."
Copy !req
1161. So, your friends start saying,
"I've seen such an improvement.
Copy !req
1162. "I've seen such improvement."
Copy !req
1163. And everybody improves all the way
around. They see improvement.
Copy !req
1164. It's like everybody's brainwashing
each other into being happy.
Copy !req
1165. But there was a more effective way
of reassuring people
Copy !req
1166. that was being developed that did
not involve medication.
Copy !req
1167. It, too, came from computer systems
Copy !req
1168. but this time,
artificial intelligence.
Copy !req
1169. But the way to do it
had been discovered by accident.
Copy !req
1170. Back in the 1960s, there had been
optimistic dreams
Copy !req
1171. that it would
be possible to develop computers
Copy !req
1172. that could think like human beings.
Copy !req
1173. Scientists then spent years
trying to programme the rules
Copy !req
1174. that governed human thought...
Copy !req
1175. .. but they never worked.
Copy !req
1176. One computer scientist, at MIT,
Copy !req
1177. became so disillusioned that he
decided to build a computer
programme
Copy !req
1178. that would parody
these hopeless attempts.
Copy !req
1179. He was called Joseph Weizenbaum
Copy !req
1180. and he built what he claimed
was a computer psychotherapist.
Copy !req
1181. Just like a therapist, people could
come and talk to the machine
Copy !req
1182. by typing in their problems.
Copy !req
1183. Weizenbaum called the programme
"Eliza".
Copy !req
1184. He modelled it on a real
psychotherapist called Carl Rogers
Copy !req
1185. who was famous for simply
repeating back to the patient
Copy !req
1186. what they had just said.
Copy !req
1187. And that is what Eliza did.
Copy !req
1188. The patient sat in front of the
screen and typed in
Copy !req
1189. what they were feeling
Copy !req
1190. and the programme repeated it back
to them,
Copy !req
1191. often in the form of a question.
Copy !req
1192. He says I'm depressed much
of the time.
Copy !req
1193. Well, I need some help.
Copy !req
1194. That much seems certain.
Copy !req
1195. One of the first people to use Eliza
was Weizenbaum's secretary
Copy !req
1196. and her reaction was something
that he had not predicted at all.
Copy !req
1197. I asked her to my office and sat her
down at the keyboard
Copy !req
1198. and then she began to type and, of
course,
Copy !req
1199. I looked over her shoulder to
make sure everything
Copy !req
1200. was operating properly.
After two or three interchanges
Copy !req
1201. with the machine she turned to
me and she said,
Copy !req
1202. "Would you mind
leaving the room, please?"
Copy !req
1203. And yet she knew, as Weizenbaum did,
that Eliza didn't understand
Copy !req
1204. a single word that was being
typed into it.
Copy !req
1205. You're like my father in some ways.
Copy !req
1206. You don't argue with me. Why do you
think I don't argue with you?
Copy !req
1207. You're afraid of me. Does it please
you to think I'm afraid of you?
Copy !req
1208. My father's afraid of everybody.
Copy !req
1209. My father's afraid of everybody...
Copy !req
1210. Weizenbaum was astonished.
Copy !req
1211. He discovered that everyone who
tried Eliza became engrossed.
Copy !req
1212. They would sit for hours
telling the machine
Copy !req
1213. about their inner feelings
Copy !req
1214. and incredibly intimate details
of their lives.
Copy !req
1215. They also liked it
because it was free
Copy !req
1216. of any kind of
patronising elitism.
Copy !req
1217. One person said, "After all,
the computer doesn't burn out,
Copy !req
1218. "look down on you,
or try to have sex with you."
Copy !req
1219. What Eliza showed was that, in an
age of individualism,
Copy !req
1220. what made people feel secure
Copy !req
1221. was having themselves reflected back
to them.
Copy !req
1222. Just like in a mirror.
Copy !req
1223. Artificial intelligence changed
direction
Copy !req
1224. and started to create new systems
that did just that,
Copy !req
1225. but on a giant scale.
Copy !req
1226. They were called intelligent agents.
Copy !req
1227. They worked by monitoring
individuals,
Copy !req
1228. gathering vast amounts of data about
their past behaviour
Copy !req
1229. and then looked for patterns
and correlations
Copy !req
1230. from which they could predict
what they would want in the future.
Copy !req
1231. It was a system that ordered
the world in a way
Copy !req
1232. that was centred around you.
Copy !req
1233. And in an age of anxious
individualism,
Copy !req
1234. frightened of the future,
Copy !req
1235. that was reassuring,
just like Eliza.
Copy !req
1236. A safe bubble that protected you
Copy !req
1237. from the complexities of the
world outside.
Copy !req
1238. And the applications of this new
direction
Copy !req
1239. proved fruitful and profitable.
Copy !req
1240. If you liked that, you'll love this.
Copy !req
1241. What was rising up in
different ways
Copy !req
1242. was a new system that promised to
keep the world stable.
Copy !req
1243. Its tentacles reached
into every area of our lives.
Copy !req
1244. Finance promised that it could
control the unpredictability
Copy !req
1245. of the free market...
Copy !req
1246. .. while individuals
were more and more monitored
Copy !req
1247. to stabilise their physical and
mental states.
Copy !req
1248. And, increasingly, the
intelligent agents online
Copy !req
1249. predicted what people
would want in the future
Copy !req
1250. and how they would behave.
Copy !req
1251. But the biggest change
was to politics.
Copy !req
1252. In a world where the overriding
aim was now stability,
Copy !req
1253. politics became just part of a wider
system of managing the world.
Copy !req
1254. The old idea of democratic
politics,
Copy !req
1255. that it gave a voice to the weak
against the powerful, was eroded.
Copy !req
1256. And a resentment began to quietly
grow out on the edges of society.
Copy !req
1257. But the new system did have
a dangerous flaw.
Copy !req
1258. Because in the real world,
not everything can be predicted
Copy !req
1259. by reading data from the past.
Copy !req
1260. And someone who was about to
discover that,
Copy !req
1261. to his own cost, was Donald Trump.
Copy !req
1262. One day a man called Jess Marcum
received a phone call.
Copy !req
1263. It was from Donald Trump
Copy !req
1264. and Trump was desperate for help.
Copy !req
1265. Marcum was a strange,
mysterious figure.
Copy !req
1266. He had been a nuclear scientist
in the 1950s
Copy !req
1267. and studied the effect of radiation
from nuclear weapons
Copy !req
1268. on the human body.
Copy !req
1269. Then Marcum had gone to Las Vegas
and become obsessed by gambling.
Copy !req
1270. He had a photographic memory
and he used it to instantly
Copy !req
1271. process the data of the games
as they were played.
Copy !req
1272. From that, he could predict the
outcome.
Copy !req
1273. And he always won.
Copy !req
1274. The Las Vegas gangsters were
fascinated by him.
Copy !req
1275. They called him "The Automat".
Copy !req
1276. Where are we going?
Let's go. Go, go, go.
Copy !req
1277. Donald Trump was one
of the heroes of the age.
Copy !req
1278. But, in reality, much of this
success was a facade.
Copy !req
1279. The banks that had lent Trump
millions
Copy !req
1280. had discovered that he could no
longer
Copy !req
1281. pay the interest on the loans.
Copy !req
1282. Trump's empire
was facing bankruptcy.
Copy !req
1283. His wife Ivana hated him
because he was having an affair
Copy !req
1284. with Miss Hawaiian Tropic 1985.
Copy !req
1285. And then, a famous Japanese gambler
called Akio Kashiwagi
Copy !req
1286. came to one of Trump's casinos
Copy !req
1287. and started to win millions
of dollars
Copy !req
1288. in an extraordinary run of luck.
Copy !req
1289. Trump, who was desperate for money,
Copy !req
1290. panicked as day-after-day
he watched millions
Copy !req
1291. being siphoned out of his casino.
Copy !req
1292. So, he turned for help
to Jess Marcum.
Copy !req
1293. Marcum came to Trump's casino
in Atlantic City.
Copy !req
1294. He analysed all the data about the
way the Kashiwagi had been playing.
Copy !req
1295. He then told Trump to suggest
a particular high-stakes game
Copy !req
1296. that he knew the Japanese
gambler could not resist.
Copy !req
1297. His model, Marcum said, predicted
that Kashiwagi had to lose.
Copy !req
1298. And after five agonising days,
he did.
Copy !req
1299. Kashiwagi lost $10 million
and he gave up.
Copy !req
1300. Donald Trump was elated.
Copy !req
1301. He thought he'd got his money back.
Copy !req
1302. Before Kashiwagi could pay
his debt,
Copy !req
1303. he was hacked to death in
his kitchen by Yakuza gangsters...
Copy !req
1304. .. and Donald Trump
didn't get his money.
Copy !req
1305. Trump's business went bankrupt
Copy !req
1306. and he was forced to sell most of
his buildings to the banks.
Copy !req
1307. And he married Miss Hawaiian Tropic.
Copy !req
1308. In the future, he would sell his
name to other people
Copy !req
1309. to put on their buildings
Copy !req
1310. and he himself would become
a celebrity tycoon.
Copy !req
1311. President Assad
didn't want stability.
Copy !req
1312. He wanted revenge.
Copy !req
1313. In December 1988,
Copy !req
1314. a bomb exploded on a Pan Am plane
over Lockerbie in Scotland.
Copy !req
1315. Almost immediately, investigators
and journalists
Copy !req
1316. pointed the finger at Syria.
Copy !req
1317. "The bombing had been done," they
said, "in revenge for the Americans
Copy !req
1318. "shooting down an Iranian airliner
in the Gulf a few months before."
Copy !req
1319. And for 18 months, everyone agreed
that this was the truth.
Copy !req
1320. But then, a strange thing happened.
Copy !req
1321. The security agencies
said that they had been wrong.
Copy !req
1322. It hadn't been Syria at all.
Copy !req
1323. It was Libya who had been behind
the Lockerbie bombing.
Copy !req
1324. But many journalists and politicians
did not believe it.
Copy !req
1325. They were convinced
that the switch had happened
Copy !req
1326. for the most cynical of reasons.
Copy !req
1327. That America and Britain desperately
needed Assad as an ally
Copy !req
1328. in the coming Gulf War against
Saddam Hussein.
Copy !req
1329. So, once again, they blamed Colonel
Gaddafi as the terrorist mastermind.
Copy !req
1330. Syria, of course, was,
unfortunately, accused
Copy !req
1331. of many terrorist outrages and
of harbouring terrorist groups.
Copy !req
1332. It appears that we have now
restored relations with them,
Copy !req
1333. as have the Americans.
They're now our friends,
Copy !req
1334. although we've got no real
assurances on the past whatsoever.
Copy !req
1335. It strikes me as very strange indeed
that many of the things
Copy !req
1336. we thought were previously
the responsibility of Syria
Copy !req
1337. have now, dramatically, become
the responsibility of Libya.
Copy !req
1338. But Assad was not really in control.
Copy !req
1339. Because he had released forces
Copy !req
1340. that no-one would be able
to control.
Copy !req
1341. The force that, ten years before,
Copy !req
1342. he had brought from Iran to attack
the West - the human bomb -
Copy !req
1343. was now about to jump,
like a virus,
Copy !req
1344. from Shia to Sunni Islam.
Copy !req
1345. In December 1992,
the militant group Hamas
Copy !req
1346. kidnapped an Israeli border guard
and stabbed him to death.
Copy !req
1347. The Israeli response
was overwhelming.
Copy !req
1348. They arrested 415 members of Hamas,
Copy !req
1349. put them on buses and took them
to the top of a bleak mountain
Copy !req
1350. in southern Lebanon.
Copy !req
1351. They left them there -
Copy !req
1352. and refused to allow any
humanitarian aid through.
Copy !req
1353. But the Israelis
had dumped the Hamas militants
Copy !req
1354. in an area controlled by Hezbollah.
Copy !req
1355. They spent six months there,
Copy !req
1356. and during that time,
they learnt from Hezbollah
Copy !req
1357. how powerful
suicide bombing could be.
Copy !req
1358. Hezbollah told them how they
had used it
Copy !req
1359. to force the Israelis out of Beirut
Copy !req
1360. and back to the border.
Copy !req
1361. The first sign that the idea
had spread to Hamas
Copy !req
1362. was when a group of the deportees
Copy !req
1363. marched in protest towards the
Israeli border,
Copy !req
1364. dressed as martyrs,
as the Israelis shelled them.
Copy !req
1365. But it soon became more
than just theatre.
Copy !req
1366. Hamas began a wave of suicide
attacks in Israel.
Copy !req
1367. Just before nine, at the
height of Tel Aviv's rush hour,
Copy !req
1368. the bomb ripped apart
a commuter bus.
Copy !req
1369. An amateur cameraman recorded
the scene in the moments afterwards
Copy !req
1370. as a dazed woman was helped out
of the smouldering wreckage.
Copy !req
1371. I didn't want to believe that under
my house there is a bomb.
Copy !req
1372. And when I realised it's a bomb,
I...
Copy !req
1373. I started to cry.
Copy !req
1374. Because it was the first time
I saw it in Tel Aviv.
Copy !req
1375. Hamas sent the bombers into
the heart of Israeli cities
Copy !req
1376. to blow themselves up and kill
as many around them as possible.
Copy !req
1377. In doing this, Hamas were going much
further than Hezbollah ever had.
Copy !req
1378. They were targeting civilians,
Copy !req
1379. something Hezbollah had never done.
Copy !req
1380. The tactic shocked the Sunni world.
Copy !req
1381. This was something completely
alien to its history.
Copy !req
1382. Not only did the
Koran forbid suicide,
Copy !req
1383. but Sunni Islam did not have any
rituals of self-sacrifice -
Copy !req
1384. unlike the Shias.
Copy !req
1385. The most senior religious leader
in Saudi Arabia
Copy !req
1386. insisted it was wrong.
Copy !req
1387. But a mainstream theologian
from Egypt
Copy !req
1388. called Sheikh Qaradawi
seized the moment.
Copy !req
1389. He issued a fatwa that
justified the attacks.
Copy !req
1390. "And," he added, "it was also
justified to kill civilians,
Copy !req
1391. "because, in Israel, everyone -
Copy !req
1392. "including women -
serve as reservists.
Copy !req
1393. "So, really, they are all part
of the enemy army."
Copy !req
1394. It's not suicide.
It is martyrdom in the name of God.
Copy !req
1395. Islamic theologians and
jurisprudence
Copy !req
1396. have debated this issue.
Copy !req
1397. Israeli women are not like
women in our society,
Copy !req
1398. because Israeli women
are militarised.
Copy !req
1399. Secondly, I consider this type
of martyrdom operation
Copy !req
1400. as an indication of justice
of Allah, our Almighty.
Copy !req
1401. Allah is just.
Copy !req
1402. Through his infinite wisdom,
Copy !req
1403. he has given the weak
what the strong do not possess.
Copy !req
1404. And that is their ability to turn
their bodies into bombs
Copy !req
1405. like the Palestinians do.
Copy !req
1406. Hamas kept sending the bombers
into Israel.
Copy !req
1407. Sometimes day-after-day.
Copy !req
1408. The horror overwhelmed
Israeli society
Copy !req
1409. and it completely destroyed
the ability of politics
Copy !req
1410. to solve the Palestinian crisis.
Copy !req
1411. Instead,
in the Israeli election of 1996,
Copy !req
1412. Benjamin Netanyahu took power.
Copy !req
1413. He turned against the peace process,
which was exactly what Hamas wanted.
Copy !req
1414. And from then on, the two sides
became locked together
Copy !req
1415. in ever more horrific cycles
of violence.
Copy !req
1416. The human bomb had destroyed
the very thing
Copy !req
1417. that President Assad
had first wanted.
Copy !req
1418. A real political solution
to the Palestinian question.
Copy !req
1419. It was just after one o'clock
Copy !req
1420. and the market
was full of shoppers.
Copy !req
1421. Streams of ambulances came to carry
away the dead and the injured.
Copy !req
1422. It was a place of appalling
suffering.
Copy !req
1423. But even with the first grief
Copy !req
1424. came the immediate political
impact on the peace process.
Copy !req
1425. Peace impossible!
Copy !req
1426. This moment, it will be the end!
Copy !req
1427. It must be the end of
this bloody peace process.
Copy !req
1428. And, in America, all optimistic
visions of the future
Copy !req
1429. had also disappeared.
Copy !req
1430. Instead everyone in society
- not just the politicians -
Copy !req
1431. but the scientists, the journalists,
and all kinds of experts
Copy !req
1432. had begun to focus on the dangers
that might be hidden in the future.
Copy !req
1433. This, in turn, created a pessimistic
mood
Copy !req
1434. that then began to spread out
from the rational technocratic world
Copy !req
1435. and infect the whole of the culture.
Copy !req
1436. And everyone became possessed
by dark forebodings,
Copy !req
1437. imagining the very worst
that might happen.
Copy !req
1438. RUMBLING, SHATTERING GLASS
Copy !req
1439. The attacks in September 2001
were suicide bombs,
Copy !req
1440. but now on a huge scale.
Copy !req
1441. They demonstrated the terrifying
power of this new force
Copy !req
1442. to penetrate all defences.
Copy !req
1443. They had come to kill thousands
of Americans on their own soil.
Copy !req
1444. 20 years before,
Copy !req
1445. President Reagan had been confronted
by the first suicide bombers.
Copy !req
1446. They had been unleashed by
President Assad of Syria
Copy !req
1447. to force America out
of the Middle East.
Copy !req
1448. But rather than confront
the complexity of Syria
Copy !req
1449. and Israel and the Palestinian
problem,
Copy !req
1450. America had retreated
and left Syria -
Copy !req
1451. and suicide bombing -
Copy !req
1452. to fester and mutate.
Copy !req
1453. They had gone instead
for Colonel Gaddafi
Copy !req
1454. and turned him into
an evil global terrorist.
Copy !req
1455. But, in the process, this changed
the way people saw
Copy !req
1456. and understood terrorism.
Copy !req
1457. Instead of a violence born out
of political struggles for power,
Copy !req
1458. it became replaced by a much simpler
image of an evil tyrant
Copy !req
1459. at the head of a rogue state
Copy !req
1460. who became more like an
archcriminal
Copy !req
1461. who wanted to terrorise the world.
Copy !req
1462. All the politics and power
dropped away.
Copy !req
1463. The problem was just them
and their evil personalities.
Copy !req
1464. And after 9/11, this led to a new,
and equally simple, idea.
Copy !req
1465. That if only you could remove
these tyrannical figures,
Copy !req
1466. then the grateful people
of their country
Copy !req
1467. would transform
naturally into a democracy,
Copy !req
1468. because they would be free
of the evil.
Copy !req
1469. We owe it to the future of
civilisation
Copy !req
1470. not to allow the
world's worst leaders
Copy !req
1471. to develop and deploy,
and therefore,
Copy !req
1472. blackmail freedom-loving countries
Copy !req
1473. with the world's worst weapons.
Copy !req
1474. We know they've already got chemical
and biological weapons there.
Copy !req
1475. We know that they're certainly doing
their best
Copy !req
1476. to acquire nuclear
weapons technology.
Copy !req
1477. If we allow them to do that,
Copy !req
1478. and do nothing about it, then,
Copy !req
1479. I think, later generations will
consider us deeply irresponsible.
Copy !req
1480. Both Tony Blair and George Bush
became possessed by the idea
Copy !req
1481. of ridding the world
of Saddam Hussein.
Copy !req
1482. So possessed that they believed
any story
Copy !req
1483. that proved his evil intentions.
Copy !req
1484. And the line between reality and
fiction became ever more blurred.
Copy !req
1485. In September 2002, the head
of MI6 rushed to Downing Street
Copy !req
1486. to tell Blair excitedly that
they had finally found the source
Copy !req
1487. that confirmed everything.
Copy !req
1488. The source, he said,
had "direct access"
Copy !req
1489. to Saddam Hussein's chemical
weapons programme
Copy !req
1490. which was making vast quantities
of VX and sarin nerve agents.
Copy !req
1491. The nerve agents were being loaded
into "linked hollow glass spheres".
Copy !req
1492. But then someone in MI6 noticed
Copy !req
1493. that the detail the source
was describing was identical
Copy !req
1494. to scenes in the 1996 movie
The Rock,
Copy !req
1495. starring Sean Connery
and Nicolas Cage.
Copy !req
1496. Really elegant string-of-pearls
configuration.
Copy !req
1497. Unfortunately, incredibly unstable.
Copy !req
1498. What exactly does this stuff do?
Copy !req
1499. If the rocket renders it aerosol,
Copy !req
1500. it could take out the entire city
of people.
Copy !req
1501. How? It's a
cholinesterase inhibitor.
Copy !req
1502. Stops the brain from sending nerve
messages down the spinal cord...
Copy !req
1503. A later report into
the Iraq War pointed out,
Copy !req
1504. "Glass containers were not typically
used in chemical munitions..."
Copy !req
1505. .. seizes your nervous system...
Do not move that!
Copy !req
1506. ".. and the informant
had obviously seen
Copy !req
1507. "a popular movie known as The Rock
Copy !req
1508. "that had inaccurately depicted
nerve agents being carried
Copy !req
1509. "in glass beads or spheres."
Copy !req
1510. .. that's after your skin melts off.
Copy !req
1511. My God.
Copy !req
1512. That there is a threat from
Saddam Hussein
Copy !req
1513. and the weapons of mass destruction
that he has acquired,
Copy !req
1514. is not in doubt at all.
Copy !req
1515. Hafez al-Assad had died in 2000.
Copy !req
1516. His son, Bashar, became the new
president of Syria.
Copy !req
1517. But he couldn't escape the
inexorable logic
Copy !req
1518. of what his father had started.
Copy !req
1519. 20 years before, his father had
sent Shi'ite suicide bombers
Copy !req
1520. to attack the Americans in Lebanon.
Copy !req
1521. Now, as America and Britain
invaded Iraq,
Copy !req
1522. Bashar decided that
he would copy his father.
Copy !req
1523. But what he was about to let loose
would tear the Arab world apart -
Copy !req
1524. and then come back to try
to destroy him.
Copy !req
1525. Bashar Assad had was never
supposed to have been president.
Copy !req
1526. It was always going to have
been his elder brother, Bassel.
Copy !req
1527. But then, Bassel had died
in a car crash.
Copy !req
1528. So now, Bashar took
over the giant palace
Copy !req
1529. that his father had built
above Damascus.
Copy !req
1530. Up to this point, Bashar had not
been interested in politics.
Copy !req
1531. He was fascinated by computers.
Copy !req
1532. He founded the
Syrian Computer Society
Copy !req
1533. and brought the
internet to the country.
Copy !req
1534. His favourite band was the
Electric Light Orchestra.
Copy !req
1535. But now, he was president.
Copy !req
1536. And he set out to attack America.
Copy !req
1537. Bashar Assad was convinced
that the invasion of Iraq
Copy !req
1538. was just the first step of a plot
by the Western powers
Copy !req
1539. to take over the whole
of the Middle East.
Copy !req
1540. He knew that the invasion
had outraged
Copy !req
1541. many of the radical Islamists
in Syria
Copy !req
1542. and what they most wanted to do was
to go to Iraq and kill Americans.
Copy !req
1543. So, Bashar instructed
the Syrian Intelligence Services
Copy !req
1544. to help them do this.
Copy !req
1545. Syrian agents set up a pipeline
Copy !req
1546. that began to feed thousands
of militants across the border
Copy !req
1547. and into the heart
of the insurgency.
Copy !req
1548. And it grew.
Copy !req
1549. Within a year,
almost all of the foreign fighters
Copy !req
1550. from across the world were
coming through Syria...
Copy !req
1551. .. and they brought suicide
bombing with them.
Copy !req
1552. The Americans estimated that 90%
of the suicide bombers in Iraq
Copy !req
1553. were foreign fighters.
Copy !req
1554. But it began to run out of control.
Copy !req
1555. Most of the jihadists had joined
the group al-Qaeda in Iraq
Copy !req
1556. that then turned to killing Shi'ites
in an attempt to create a civil war.
Copy !req
1557. And the force that had originally
been invented by the Shi'ites,
Copy !req
1558. suicide bombing, now returned
Copy !req
1559. and started to kill them.
Copy !req
1560. Then, this.
Copy !req
1561. A moment of silence before people
realised what was happening.
Copy !req
1562. A few seconds ago, we just
had repeated explosions
Copy !req
1563. in the street below me.
Copy !req
1564. People are now fleeing in terror
Copy !req
1565. from the central square
around the mosque.
Copy !req
1566. This is what everybody feared...
Copy !req
1567. We just heard another explosion
in the distance.
Copy !req
1568. .. that somebody would try to target
this religious festival
Copy !req
1569. to try to bring about
a sectarian conflict in Iraq.
Copy !req
1570. There was panic.
Copy !req
1571. A terrified stampede.
Copy !req
1572. But some of these people
were running into the next bombs.
Copy !req
1573. We counted at least six
separate explosions.
Copy !req
1574. Tony Blair and George Bush
were faced by disaster.
Copy !req
1575. Iraq was imploding.
Copy !req
1576. While, at home, they were being
accused of lying to their own people
Copy !req
1577. to justify the invasion.
Copy !req
1578. What they desperately needed
was something that would show
Copy !req
1579. that the invasion was having
a good effect in the Arab world.
Copy !req
1580. So, they made
an extraordinary decision.
Copy !req
1581. They turned for help to the man
who they had always insisted
Copy !req
1582. was one of the world's most
dangerous tyrants.
Copy !req
1583. Colonel Gaddafi.
Copy !req
1584. And, instead, they set out to make
him their new best friend.
Copy !req
1585. It was going to be
the highest achievement
Copy !req
1586. of Perception Management.
Copy !req
1587. A man who had been created
by the West
Copy !req
1588. as a fake global supervillain
Copy !req
1589. was now going to be turned
into a fake hero of democracy.
Copy !req
1590. And everyone, not just politicians,
would become involved.
Copy !req
1591. Public relations, academics,
Copy !req
1592. television presenters, spies,
and even musicians
Copy !req
1593. were all going to
help reinvent Colonel Gaddafi.
Copy !req
1594. It would show just how many people
in the Western Establishment
Copy !req
1595. had, by now, become the engineers
of this fake world.
Copy !req
1596. Ever since he had been accused
of the Lockerbie bombing,
Copy !req
1597. Colonel Gaddafi
had been a complete outcast.
Copy !req
1598. The West had imposed
sanctions on Libya
Copy !req
1599. and the economy was falling apart.
Copy !req
1600. But then, suddenly, Tony Blair broke
live into the BBC evening news.
Copy !req
1601. The Prime Minister, Tony Blair,
is about to make a statement,
Copy !req
1602. the BBC understands,
from Downing Street.
Copy !req
1603. It's of international significance.
Copy !req
1604. He'll be making his statement
at any moment now.
Copy !req
1605. We can see pictures
of him in Durham...
Copy !req
1606. This evening... Here he is.
Copy !req
1607. .. Colonel Gaddafi has confirmed
that Libya has, in the past,
Copy !req
1608. sought to develop
weapons-of-mass-destruction
Copy !req
1609. capabilities.
Copy !req
1610. Libya has now declared its intention
to dismantle
Copy !req
1611. its weapons of
mass destruction completely.
Copy !req
1612. This decision by Colonel Gaddafi
is a historic one,
Copy !req
1613. and a courageous one,
and I applaud it.
Copy !req
1614. Today, in Tripoli,
Copy !req
1615. the leader of Libya,
Copy !req
1616. Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi...
Copy !req
1617. .. publically confirmed his
commitment to disclose and dismantle
Copy !req
1618. all weapons-of-mass-destruction
programmes in his country.
Copy !req
1619. Colonel Gaddafi now became,
Copy !req
1620. for Western politicians,
a heroic figure.
Copy !req
1621. His decision to give up his weapons
of mass destruction
Copy !req
1622. seemed to prove
that the invasion of Iraq
Copy !req
1623. could transform the Middle East.
Copy !req
1624. And Tony Blair travelled to meet
Gaddafi in his desert tent.
Copy !req
1625. To welcome him back into
what one journalist called,
Copy !req
1626. "The community
of civilised nations."
Copy !req
1627. But, as in the past,
Copy !req
1628. nothing was what it seemed
with Colonel Gaddafi.
Copy !req
1629. In reality, Gaddafi
did not really have
Copy !req
1630. the terrifying
weapons of mass destruction
Copy !req
1631. that he was promising to destroy.
Copy !req
1632. His nuclear programme
had stuttered to a halt long ago
Copy !req
1633. and never produced
anything dangerous.
Copy !req
1634. He had managed to buy some
equipment on the black market,
Copy !req
1635. but his technicians had been
unable to assemble it.
Copy !req
1636. His biological weapons
were non-existent.
Copy !req
1637. All he had was some old mustard gas
in leaking barrels.
Copy !req
1638. But now, he had to pretend to have
a terrifying arsenal of weapons.
Copy !req
1639. And the West had to pretend
Copy !req
1640. that they had avoided
another global threat.
Copy !req
1641. And then the made-up stories
became even more complicated.
Copy !req
1642. As part of the deal, the West said
that if Gaddafi admitted
Copy !req
1643. that Libya had done
the Lockerbie bombing,
Copy !req
1644. then they would lift
the sanctions.
Copy !req
1645. But many of those who
had investigated Lockerbie
Copy !req
1646. were still convinced
that Libya hadn't done it.
Copy !req
1647. That, really, it had been Syria.
Copy !req
1648. But Colonel Gaddafi confessed.
Copy !req
1649. His son, Saif, was interviewed
about this confession.
Copy !req
1650. He said that his father
was simply pretending
Copy !req
1651. that he had been behind
the Lockerbie bombing
Copy !req
1652. to get the sanctions lifted.
Copy !req
1653. That new lies were being built
on top of old lies
Copy !req
1654. to construct a completely
make-believe world.
Copy !req
1655. You have to accept,
or you had to accept at the time,
Copy !req
1656. a responsibility, because you have
to accept responsibilities,
Copy !req
1657. you have to pay compensation in
order to get rid of sanction.
Copy !req
1658. We did that, not because we are
convinced that we did it,
Copy !req
1659. but because of the final exit
out of this nightmare.
Copy !req
1660. So, what you're saying is that
you accept responsibility,
Copy !req
1661. but you're not admitting
that you did it. Yes.
Copy !req
1662. And this is all a sham,
Copy !req
1663. you're saying,
just to get sanctions over with
Copy !req
1664. so that you can start normal
diplomatic relations with the West.
Copy !req
1665. OK. OK. What's wrong with that?
Copy !req
1666. It's a very cynical way to behave,
as a country, isn't it?
Copy !req
1667. Many people would say...
First of all...
Copy !req
1668. I mean,
the Americans and the British,
Copy !req
1669. they told us to write that letter.
Copy !req
1670. They told us to pay compensation.
Copy !req
1671. And then, they opened their
embassies
Copy !req
1672. and they restored their relation.
Copy !req
1673. They came to us.
Copy !req
1674. It was their game. Not our game.
Copy !req
1675. Does the... Does the leader know
there's a picture on the television?
Copy !req
1676. Will you tell him?
Oh, good. Thank you.
Copy !req
1677. Public relations companies
then came to Libya
Copy !req
1678. to do what they
called "reframing the narrative".
Copy !req
1679. One firm was paid
$3 million to turn Gaddafi
Copy !req
1680. into what they described
as a modern world thinker.
Copy !req
1681. OK. We're going in ten.
Copy !req
1682. They did this by bringing
other famous world thinkers
Copy !req
1683. and TV presenters out to Libya
to meet the colonel
Copy !req
1684. and discuss his theories.
Copy !req
1685. Hello, and welcome to
Libya In The Global Age,
Copy !req
1686. A Conversation With Muammar Gaddafi.
Copy !req
1687. But first,
let's get the story so far of Libya.
Copy !req
1688. One world thinker was called
Lord Anthony Giddens.
Copy !req
1689. Coincidentally, he had a theory
which he called "The Third Way"
Copy !req
1690. which had inspired Tony Blair.
Copy !req
1691. Colonel Gaddafi's own theory was
called "The Third Universal Theory."
Copy !req
1692. Lord Giddens later wrote
about his talks
Copy !req
1693. with the Libyan leader.
Copy !req
1694. "Colonel Gaddafi likes my term
'the third way'
Copy !req
1695. "because his own political
philosophy
Copy !req
1696. "is a version of this idea.
Copy !req
1697. "He makes many intelligent
and perceptive points.
Copy !req
1698. "I leave enlivened and encouraged."
Copy !req
1699. That for 40 years, the leader of
Libya, Muammar Gaddafi...
Copy !req
1700. And then, Colonel Gaddafi
achieved his lifelong dream.
Copy !req
1701. He was invited to address
the United Nations.
Copy !req
1702. He spent almost two hours explaining
his Third International Theory.
Copy !req
1703. And also demanding an investigation
Copy !req
1704. into the shootings of President
Kennedy and Martin Luther King.
Copy !req
1705. When he was in New York,
Gaddafi was offered a tent,
Copy !req
1706. just like the one he had at home,
Copy !req
1707. in the gardens of a grand mansion.
Copy !req
1708. The man who made the offer was
Donald Trump.
Copy !req
1709. 'I've dealt with everybody.
Copy !req
1710. 'And by the way, I can tell you
something else!' What?
Copy !req
1711. 'I've dealt with Gaddafi.'
Copy !req
1712. What did you do? 'Excuse me.
I rented him a piece of land.
Copy !req
1713. 'He paid me more for one night
than the land was worth
Copy !req
1714. 'for the whole year
or for two years.
Copy !req
1715. 'And then,
I didn't let him use the land!
Copy !req
1716. 'That's what we should be doing.'
Was that over in New Jersey?
Copy !req
1717. 'I don't want to use the word
"screw", but I screwed him.
Copy !req
1718. 'That's what we should be doing!'
Copy !req
1719. People in Britain and
America now began to
Copy !req
1720. turn away from politics.
Copy !req
1721. The effect of the Iraq war had been
very powerful.
Copy !req
1722. Not only did millions of people feel
that they had been lied to
Copy !req
1723. over the weapons of
mass destruction,
Copy !req
1724. but there was a deeper
feeling - that whatever
Copy !req
1725. they did or said had no effect.
Copy !req
1726. That despite the mass protests, and
the fears and the warnings -
Copy !req
1727. the war had happened anyway.
Copy !req
1728. Liberals, radicals and
a whole new generation
Copy !req
1729. of young people retreated.
Copy !req
1730. They turned instead to another world
that was free of this hypocrisy
Copy !req
1731. and the corruption of politics
Copy !req
1732. They went into cyberspace.
Copy !req
1733. By now cyberspace had
become even more
Copy !req
1734. sophisticated and
responsive to human interaction.
Copy !req
1735. The online
world was full of algorithms
Copy !req
1736. that could
analyse and predict human behaviour.
Copy !req
1737. The man
behind much of this was
Copy !req
1738. a scientist called Judea Pearl.
Copy !req
1739. He was the godfather of modern
Artificial Intelligence.
Copy !req
1740. Pearl's breakthrough had
been to use what were
Copy !req
1741. called Bayesian Belief Networks.
Copy !req
1742. They were systems that could
predict behaviour,
Copy !req
1743. even when the information was
incomplete.
Copy !req
1744. But to make the system work, Pearl
and others had imported
Copy !req
1745. a model of human beings
drawn from economics.
Copy !req
1746. They created what were
called rational agents,
Copy !req
1747. software that mimicked human beings
Copy !req
1748. but in a very simplified form.
Copy !req
1749. The model assumed that the agent
would always act rationally in
Copy !req
1750. order to get what it
wanted. Nothing more.
Copy !req
1751. One of the early
utopians of cyberspace,
Copy !req
1752. Jaron Lanier, warned of
the implications of this.
Copy !req
1753. "The agent's model of
what you are
Copy !req
1754. "interested in will
always be a cartoon.
Copy !req
1755. "And in return you
will see a cartoon
Copy !req
1756. "version of the world
through the agent's eyes."
Copy !req
1757. And, he added,
"It will never be clear
Copy !req
1758. "who they are working
for - you or someone else."
Copy !req
1759. New technology began to
allow people to upload
Copy !req
1760. millions of images and
videos into cyberspace.
Copy !req
1761. And the web - which up
to that point had seemed
Copy !req
1762. like an abstract
otherworld - began to
Copy !req
1763. look and feel like the
real world.
Copy !req
1764. No, not yet.
Copy !req
1765. From videos of animals,
personal moments of
Copy !req
1766. experience,
extraordinary events,
Copy !req
1767. to horrific terror videos,
more and more was uploaded.
Copy !req
1768. And in a
strange, sad twist,
Copy !req
1769. the first terrorist
beheading video that was
Copy !req
1770. posted online was that of
Copy !req
1771. Judea Pearl's own son, Daniel Pearl.
Copy !req
1772. He was a journalist for the
Copy !req
1773. Wall Street Journal and
had been kidnapped by
Copy !req
1774. radical Islamists in Pakistan.
Copy !req
1775. They recorded what they said was his
confession...
Copy !req
1776. .. and then his killing.
Copy !req
1777. My name is Daniel Pearl.
Copy !req
1778. I'm a Jewish-American.
Copy !req
1779. I come from... On my father's side
of the family, are Zionists.
Copy !req
1780. My father is Jewish.
Copy !req
1781. My mother is Jewish.
I'm Jewish.
Copy !req
1782. Only now do I think about some of
the people in Guantanamo Bay
Copy !req
1783. must be in a similar situation.
Copy !req
1784. This was a new world
that the old systems of power
Copy !req
1785. found it very
difficult to deal with.
Copy !req
1786. In the wake of the 9/11
attacks,
Copy !req
1787. the security agencies secretly
collected data from
Copy !req
1788. millions of people online.
Copy !req
1789. One programme was called
Optic Nerve. It took stills from
Copy !req
1790. the webcam conversations of
millions of people across the world,
Copy !req
1791. trying to spot terrorists planning
another attack.
Copy !req
1792. The programme did not
discover a single terrorist.
Copy !req
1793. But it did
discover something else.
Copy !req
1794. A top secret assessment said...
Copy !req
1795. But increasingly, people
were using
Copy !req
1796. the internet in other ways - to
present themselves as
Copy !req
1797. THEY wanted to be seen.
Copy !req
1798. I guess the video blog is about me.
Copy !req
1799. I don't really want to tell you
where I live
Copy !req
1800. because you could, like, stalk me.
Copy !req
1801. The web drew people in
because it was mesmerising.
Copy !req
1802. It was somewhere that you could
explore
Copy !req
1803. and get lost in in any way
you wanted.
Copy !req
1804. But behind the screen,
like in a two-way mirror,
Copy !req
1805. the simplified
agents were watching and
Copy !req
1806. predicting and guiding
your hand on the mouse.
Copy !req
1807. Stop...
Copy !req
1808. I nearly...
threw my phone away!
Copy !req
1809. Stop! Stop!
Copy !req
1810. Pose. Pose. And snap a selfie...
Copy !req
1811. There you go. There you go.
Copy !req
1812. They play with themselves.
Copy !req
1813. But what they don't know...
Copy !req
1814. As the intelligent
systems online gathered
Copy !req
1815. ever more data, new
forms of guidance began to emerge.
Copy !req
1816. Social media
created filters -
Copy !req
1817. complex algorithms that
looked at what
Copy !req
1818. individuals liked - and
then fed more of the same
Copy !req
1819. back to them.
Copy !req
1820. In the process,
individuals began to
Copy !req
1821. move, without noticing,
into bubbles that
Copy !req
1822. isolated them from enormous amounts
of other information.
Copy !req
1823. They
only heard and saw what they liked.
Copy !req
1824. And the news
feeds increasingly
Copy !req
1825. excluded anything that
might challenge people's
Copy !req
1826. pre-existing beliefs.
Copy !req
1827. The version of
cyberspace that was
Copy !req
1828. rising up seemed to be
very much like
Copy !req
1829. William Gibson's original vision.
Copy !req
1830. That behind the superficial freedoms
of the web
Copy !req
1831. were a few giant corporations with
opaque systems that controlled
Copy !req
1832. what people saw and
shaped what they thought.
Copy !req
1833. And what was
even more mysterious was
Copy !req
1834. how they made their decisions about
what you should like.
Copy !req
1835. And what
should be hidden from you.
Copy !req
1836. But then, the other utopian vision
of cyberspace re-emerged.
Copy !req
1837. Taking over the roadway.
Copy !req
1838. Take it!
Copy !req
1839. After the financial
crash of 2008
Copy !req
1840. the politicians saved the banks.
Copy !req
1841. But they did practically nothing
about the massive corruption
Copy !req
1842. that was
revealed in its wake.
Copy !req
1843. And the reason they gave
was that it might
Copy !req
1844. destabilise the system.
Copy !req
1845. Public anger burst out. The Occupy
movement took over Wall Street
Copy !req
1846. and then the Senate in Washington.
Copy !req
1847. The issue is that certain
individuals
Copy !req
1848. that are very wealthy, have pretty
much corrupted our political system
Copy !req
1849. and this is the heart of it.
Copy !req
1850. This is the Senate building.
Copy !req
1851. These people have been cut off and
they've corrupted our democracy
Copy !req
1852. and it's literally killing people.
Copy !req
1853. I'm an Iraqi war vet.
I went to Iraq in 2009.
Copy !req
1854. I've seen what happens first hand
when we let corruption
Copy !req
1855. rule our elected government and
democracy. We're coming here today
Copy !req
1856. just to raise awareness.
Copy !req
1857. What drove the Occupy
movement was the
Copy !req
1858. original dream of the
internet that people
Copy !req
1859. like John Perry Barlow
had outlined in the early 1990s.
Copy !req
1860. In his Declaration of the
Independence of Cyberspace,
Copy !req
1861. Barlow had described a new world
free of politics and the
Copy !req
1862. old hierarchies of power.
Copy !req
1863. A space where people connected
together as equals in a network
Copy !req
1864. and built a
new society without leaders.
Copy !req
1865. Now, the Occupy
movement set out to
Copy !req
1866. build that kind of
society in the real world.
Copy !req
1867. The camps were to
be the models.
Copy !req
1868. All the meetings used the idea
of the human microphone.
Copy !req
1869. People throughout the
crowd repeated a
Copy !req
1870. speaker's words so
everyone could hear them.
Copy !req
1871. We are now going to vote...
Copy !req
1872. .. on whether to stay here
for the next two hours...
Copy !req
1873. .. on whether to stay here for
the next two hours...
Copy !req
1874. .. or leave now.
Copy !req
1875. .. or leave now.
Copy !req
1876. But if someone wanted to
challenge the speaker,
Copy !req
1877. the human amplifiers
also had to repeat THEIR words
Copy !req
1878. so their voice
had equal power.
Copy !req
1879. .. what she said...
Copy !req
1880. .. what she said...
Copy !req
1881. .. was that... was
that... the proposal...
Copy !req
1882. Each person was an autonomous
individual who expressed
Copy !req
1883. what they believed.
Copy !req
1884. But together they became components
in a network that organised itself
Copy !req
1885. through the feedback of information
around the system.
Copy !req
1886. You could organise people without
the exercise of power.
Copy !req
1887. The crisis in Egypt.
Copy !req
1888. A march through our main streets.
Copy !req
1889. Looks like chaos. Looks like
Copy !req
1890. police is running around
Copy !req
1891. and a few hundred people walking
down the street.
Copy !req
1892. Then, almost immediately,
the Arab Spring began.
Copy !req
1893. The first
revolution started in Tunisia,
Copy !req
1894. but it
quickly spread to Egypt.
Copy !req
1895. On January 25th 2011,
thousands of Egyptians
Copy !req
1896. came out in groups
across Cairo and then
Copy !req
1897. started moving towards
Tahrir Square.
Copy !req
1898. It seemed like a spontaneous
uprising but the internet
Copy !req
1899. had played a
key role in organising the groups.
Copy !req
1900. One of the main activists was
Copy !req
1901. an Egyptian computer
engineer called Wael Ghonim.
Copy !req
1902. He worked for Google in Egypt
Copy !req
1903. but he had also set up the
Facebook site that
Copy !req
1904. played the key role in
organising the first protests.
Copy !req
1905. As hundreds of
thousands took over Tahrir Square,
Copy !req
1906. Ghonim
gave an interview on Egyptian TV.
Copy !req
1907. But Ghonim was also
overwhelmed by the power
Copy !req
1908. this new technology had,
Copy !req
1909. that a computer engineer with a
keyboard could call out
Copy !req
1910. thousands of people...
Copy !req
1911. some of whom then died in the
midst of the protests.
Copy !req
1912. Many liberals in the
West saw this as proof
Copy !req
1913. of the revolutionary
power of the internet.
Copy !req
1914. Again it seemed to be
able to organise
Copy !req
1915. a revolution without leaders.
Copy !req
1916. A revolution powerful enough to
topple a brutal dictator
Copy !req
1917. who had been backed by
America and the West for 30 years.
Copy !req
1918. But the internet
radicals were not the
Copy !req
1919. only ones who saw their
dreams being fulfilled
Copy !req
1920. in the Arab Spring.
Copy !req
1921. Many of the political leaders of the
West also
Copy !req
1922. enthusiastically supported the
revolutions
Copy !req
1923. because it seemed to fit with their
simple idea of regime change.
Copy !req
1924. It might have
failed in Iraq
Copy !req
1925. but now the people, everywhere,
were rising up to rid
Copy !req
1926. themselves of the evil
tyrants.
Copy !req
1927. And democracy would flourish.
Copy !req
1928. So when an uprising
began in Libya,
Copy !req
1929. Britain, France and
America supported it.
Copy !req
1930. And suddenly, Colonel
Gaddafi stopped being
Copy !req
1931. a hero of the West.
Copy !req
1932. All the politicians, and the public
relations people, and the academics
Copy !req
1933. who had all promoted him as
a global thinker
Copy !req
1934. suddenly disappeared.
Copy !req
1935. And Gaddafi became yet again an evil
dictator who had to be overthrown.
Copy !req
1936. His son Saif said, "The
way these people are
Copy !req
1937. "disowning me and my
father is disgusting.
Copy !req
1938. "Just a few months ago, we
were being treated as
Copy !req
1939. "honoured friends.
Copy !req
1940. "Now that rebels are threatening our
country, these cowards
Copy !req
1941. "are turning on us."
Copy !req
1942. Colonel Gaddafi retreated to the
ruins of the house that
Copy !req
1943. the Americans had bombed 30 years
before and addressed the world.
Copy !req
1944. Muammar Gaddafi is the glory.
Copy !req
1945. If I had a position, if I were a
president,
Copy !req
1946. I would have resigned.
Copy !req
1947. I would have thrown my resignation
in your face.
Copy !req
1948. But I have no position, no post.
Copy !req
1949. I have nowhere to resign from.
Copy !req
1950. I have my gun, I have my rifle
to fight for Libya.
Copy !req
1951. Withdraw your children from the
streets.
Copy !req
1952. Take your children back.
Copy !req
1953. They are drugging your children.
Copy !req
1954. They are making your children drunk
Copy !req
1955. and they are sending them to hell.
Copy !req
1956. Your children will die. What for?
Copy !req
1957. In November 2011 a large convoy was
spotted driving at high speed
Copy !req
1958. away from Colonel Gaddafi's home
town of Sirte.
Copy !req
1959. An American drone,
Copy !req
1960. controlled from a shed
outside Las Vegas,
Copy !req
1961. was sent to follow it.
Copy !req
1962. The operator fired a missile at the
lead car of the convoy.
Copy !req
1963. Gaddafi then fled -
looking for shelter from
Copy !req
1964. the oncoming rebel forces.
Copy !req
1965. He hid under the road in a drainage
pipe.
Copy !req
1966. But instead of becoming
a democracy,
Copy !req
1967. Libya began to descend into chaos.
Copy !req
1968. And the other
revolutions were also failing.
Copy !req
1969. The Occupy camps had become trapped
in endless meetings.
Copy !req
1970. And it
became clear that there
Copy !req
1971. was a terrible confusion
at the heart of the movement.
Copy !req
1972. The radicals
had believed that if
Copy !req
1973. they could create a new
way of organising people
Copy !req
1974. then a new society
would emerge.
Copy !req
1975. But what they did not have was a
picture of what that
Copy !req
1976. society would be like, a
vision of the future.
Copy !req
1977. The truth was that their
revolution was not about an idea.
Copy !req
1978. It was about
how you manage things.
Copy !req
1979. And those who had
started the revolution
Copy !req
1980. in Egypt came face-to-face with the
same terrible fact.
Copy !req
1981. Social media had helped
Copy !req
1982. to bring people together
in Tahrir square.
Copy !req
1983. But once there, the
internet gave no clue as
Copy !req
1984. to what kind of new
society they could create in Egypt.
Copy !req
1985. The movement stalled.
Copy !req
1986. And a group that DID have a
powerful idea - the
Copy !req
1987. Muslim Brotherhood -
rushed in to fill the vacuum.
Copy !req
1988. The Brotherhood
took power in an election
Copy !req
1989. and one of them, Mohamed Morsi,
became President.
Copy !req
1990. The liberals and the Left were
shocked.
Copy !req
1991. And, bit by
bit, they turned back to
Copy !req
1992. the military, protesting,
asking them to save
Copy !req
1993. the revolution from
being captured by Islamists.
Copy !req
1994. In the spring of 2013,
the military took action.
Copy !req
1995. They arrested
the President and
Copy !req
1996. killed hundreds of his
supporters who protested.
Copy !req
1997. And an extraordinary spectacle
unfolded in Tahrir Square.
Copy !req
1998. Thousands of the
liberal activists who
Copy !req
1999. had begun the revolution
two years before,
Copy !req
2000. summoned by social
media, now welcomed the
Copy !req
2001. military back by waving
their laser pens at the
Copy !req
2002. helicopters flying overhead.
Copy !req
2003. The crowd had been summoned there
once again by Facebook.
Copy !req
2004. After the failure of the
revolutions, it was not
Copy !req
2005. just the radicals -
no-one in the West had
Copy !req
2006. any idea of how to
change the world.
Copy !req
2007. At home, the politicians had
given so much of their
Copy !req
2008. power away, to finance
and the ever-growing
Copy !req
2009. managerial bureaucracies,
that they in effect
Copy !req
2010. had become managers themselves.
Copy !req
2011. While abroad, all their adventures
had failed.
Copy !req
2012. And their simplistic vision of the
world had been exposed
Copy !req
2013. as dangerous and
destructive.
Copy !req
2014. But in Russia, there
was a group of men who
Copy !req
2015. had seen how this very
lack of belief in
Copy !req
2016. politics, and dark
uncertainty about the
Copy !req
2017. future could work to
their advantage.
Copy !req
2018. What they had done was turn
politics into a strange
Copy !req
2019. theatre where nobody
knew what was true or
Copy !req
2020. what was fake any longer.
Copy !req
2021. They were called political
technologists and they were
Copy !req
2022. the key figures behind
President Putin.
Copy !req
2023. They had kept him in power,
unchallenged, for 15 years.
Copy !req
2024. Some of them had been dissidents
back in the 1970s
Copy !req
2025. and had been powerfully
influenced by the
Copy !req
2026. science fiction writings
of the Strugatsky brothers.
Copy !req
2027. 20 years
later, when Russia fell
Copy !req
2028. apart after the end of
communism, they rose up
Copy !req
2029. and took control of the media.
Copy !req
2030. And they used it to manipulate the
electorate on a vast scale.
Copy !req
2031. For them, reality
was just something that
Copy !req
2032. could be manipulated
and shaped into anything
Copy !req
2033. you wanted it to be.
Copy !req
2034. But then a technologist
emerged who went much further.
Copy !req
2035. And his ideas
would become central to
Copy !req
2036. Putin's grip on power.
Copy !req
2037. He was called Vladislav Surkov.
Copy !req
2038. Surkov came originally from the
theatre world and those who have
Copy !req
2039. studied his career say that what
he did was take
Copy !req
2040. avant-garde ideas from
the theatre and bring
Copy !req
2041. them into the heart of
politics.
Copy !req
2042. Surkov's aim was not just to
manipulate people
Copy !req
2043. but to go deeper and play
with, and undermine
Copy !req
2044. their very perception of
the world so they are
Copy !req
2045. never sure what is
really happening.
Copy !req
2046. Surkov turned Russian
politics into
Copy !req
2047. a bewildering, constantly
changing piece of theatre.
Copy !req
2048. He used Kremlin
money to sponsor
Copy !req
2049. all kinds of groups - from mass
anti-fascist youth organisations,
Copy !req
2050. to the
very opposite - neo-Nazi skinheads.
Copy !req
2051. And liberal
human rights groups who
Copy !req
2052. then attacked the government.
Copy !req
2053. Surkov even backed whole political
parties that were
Copy !req
2054. opposed to President Putin.
Copy !req
2055. But the key thing was that Surkov
then let it be known that this
Copy !req
2056. was what he was doing.
Copy !req
2057. Which meant that no-one was sure
what was real or what was fake
Copy !req
2058. in modern Russia.
Copy !req
2059. As one journalist put it,
Copy !req
2060. "It's a strategy of power
that keeps any opposition
Copy !req
2061. "constantly confused -
Copy !req
2062. "a ceaseless shape-shifting
that is unstoppable
Copy !req
2063. "because it is indefinable."
Copy !req
2064. Meanwhile, real power
was elsewhere -
Copy !req
2065. hidden away behind the stage,
Copy !req
2066. exercised without
anyone seeing it.
Copy !req
2067. And then the same thing seemed to
start happening in the West.
Copy !req
2068. By now it was becoming ever more
clear
Copy !req
2069. that the system had deep flaws.
Copy !req
2070. Every month there were
new revelations,
Copy !req
2071. of most of the banks' involvement
in global corruption,
Copy !req
2072. of massive tax avoidance by
all the major corporations,
Copy !req
2073. of the secret surveillance
of everyone's e-mails
Copy !req
2074. by the National Security Agency.
Copy !req
2075. Yet no-one was prosecuted,
Copy !req
2076. except for a few people
at the lowest levels.
Copy !req
2077. And behind it all,
Copy !req
2078. the massive inequality
kept on growing.
Copy !req
2079. Yet the structure of power
remained the same.
Copy !req
2080. Nothing ever changed -
Copy !req
2081. because nothing could be allowed
to destabilise the system.
Copy !req
2082. But then the shape-shifting began.
Copy !req
2083. Thank you very much. So nice.
Copy !req
2084. So amazing. So amazing.
Copy !req
2085. We love you.
What? That's OK.
Copy !req
2086. I love you more, OK?
Copy !req
2087. The campaign that Donald Trump ran
Copy !req
2088. was unlike anything before
in politics.
Copy !req
2089. Nothing was fixed.
Copy !req
2090. What he said, who he attacked
Copy !req
2091. and how he attacked them was
constantly changing and shifting.
Copy !req
2092. Trump attacked his Republican rivals
Copy !req
2093. as all being part of
a broken and corrupt system -
Copy !req
2094. a politics where everyone
could be bought,
Copy !req
2095. using words that could have come
from the Occupy movement.
Copy !req
2096. You've also donated to several
Democratic candidates,
Copy !req
2097. Hillary Clinton included,
Nancy Pelosi.
Copy !req
2098. You explained away those donations
saying you did that
Copy !req
2099. to get business-related favours.
Copy !req
2100. And you said recently,
"When you give,
Copy !req
2101. "they do whatever the hell
you want them to do."
Copy !req
2102. You'd better believe it.
So what specifically did they do?
Copy !req
2103. If I ask them, if I need them...
Copy !req
2104. You know, most of the people
on this stage,
Copy !req
2105. I've given to, just so
you understand, a lot of money.
Copy !req
2106. I will tell you that
our system is broken.
Copy !req
2107. I give to many people.
Copy !req
2108. Before this, before two months ago,
I was a businessman.
Copy !req
2109. I give to everybody.
When they call, I give.
Copy !req
2110. And you know what, when I need
something from them,
Copy !req
2111. two years later, three years later,
I call them.
Copy !req
2112. They are there for me. So what did
you get? And that's a broken system.
Copy !req
2113. But at the same time,
Trump used the language
Copy !req
2114. of the extreme racist right
in America,
Copy !req
2115. connecting with
people's darkest fears -
Copy !req
2116. pushing them and bringing
those fears out into the open.
Copy !req
2117. Get the fuck out of here!
Copy !req
2118. Our country, motherfucker!
Copy !req
2119. Our country!
Copy !req
2120. Proud fucking American!
Copy !req
2121. Made in the USA, bitch!
Copy !req
2122. Made in the fucking USA!
Copy !req
2123. Don't fucking come back,
burrito bitch!
Copy !req
2124. Go fucking right back to jail,
motherfucker!
Copy !req
2125. Build that fucking wall for me!
Copy !req
2126. Trump! Donald Trump!
Copy !req
2127. Fuck you! I love my country!
Copy !req
2128. Yeah! I'll fuck like at least
ten of you up in one session,
Copy !req
2129. you fucking pussy!
Copy !req
2130. Many of the facts
that Trump asserted
Copy !req
2131. were also completely untrue.
Copy !req
2132. But Trump didn't care.
Copy !req
2133. He and his audience knew
that much of what he said
Copy !req
2134. bore little relationship to reality.
Copy !req
2135. This meant that
Trump defeated journalism -
Copy !req
2136. because the journalists'
central belief was that
Copy !req
2137. their job was to expose
lies and assert the truth.
Copy !req
2138. With Trump, this became irrelevant.
Copy !req
2139. Not surprisingly,
Vladimir Putin admired this.
Copy !req
2140. The liberals were outraged by Trump.
Copy !req
2141. But they expressed their
anger in cyberspace,
Copy !req
2142. so it had no effect -
Copy !req
2143. because the algorithms made sure
that they only spoke to people
Copy !req
2144. who already agreed with them.
Copy !req
2145. Instead, ironically, their waves
of angry messages and tweets
Copy !req
2146. benefitted the large corporations
who ran the social media platforms.
Copy !req
2147. One online analyst put it simply,
"Angry people click more."
Copy !req
2148. It meant that the radical fury
Copy !req
2149. that came like waves across
the internet
Copy !req
2150. no longer had the power
to change the world.
Copy !req
2151. Instead, it was becoming a fuel
Copy !req
2152. that was feeding the new systems
of power
Copy !req
2153. and making them ever more powerful.
Copy !req
2154. But none of the liberals
could possibly imagine
Copy !req
2155. that Donald Trump
could ever win the nomination.
Copy !req
2156. It was just a giant pantomime.
Copy !req
2157. Then of course
there's Donald Trump.
Copy !req
2158. Donald Trump has been saying that
he will run for president
Copy !req
2159. as a Republican,
which is surprising,
Copy !req
2160. since I just assumed he was
running as a joke.
Copy !req
2161. Donald Trump often appears on
Fox, which is ironic,
Copy !req
2162. because a fox often appears on
Donald Trump's head.
Copy !req
2163. Donald Trump owns
the Miss USA Pageant,
Copy !req
2164. which is great for Republicans
Copy !req
2165. because it will streamline their
search for a vice president.
Copy !req
2166. Donald Trump said recently he has a
great relationship with the blacks.
Copy !req
2167. though unless the Blacks
are a family of white people,
Copy !req
2168. I bet he's mistaken.
Copy !req
2169. But underneath the liberal disdain,
Copy !req
2170. both Donald Trump in America,
and Vladislav Surkov in Russia
Copy !req
2171. had realised the same thing -
Copy !req
2172. that the version of reality that
politics presented
Copy !req
2173. was no longer believable,
Copy !req
2174. that the stories politicians told
their people about the world
Copy !req
2175. had stopped making sense.
Copy !req
2176. And in the face of that,
you could play with reality,
Copy !req
2177. constantly shifting and changing,
Copy !req
2178. and in the process,
further undermine and weaken
Copy !req
2179. the old forms of power.
Copy !req
2180. And there was another force that was
about to dramatically reveal
Copy !req
2181. just how weak politics had
become in the West -
Copy !req
2182. Syria.
Copy !req
2183. The attack happened here at
a central police station
Copy !req
2184. in Damascus.
Copy !req
2185. Police say the bomber
came up the stairs,
Copy !req
2186. police then opened fire,
Copy !req
2187. and then police say
he detonated the explosives.
Copy !req
2188. And the damage is here to see.
Copy !req
2189. Behind me, the pockmarked walls
where the ball bearings hit.
Copy !req
2190. Blood splattered on the walls.
Copy !req
2191. And the force of the blast
caused walls to collapse.
Copy !req
2192. And everything is topsy-turvy,
everything destroyed.
Copy !req
2193. By now Syria was being torn apart
by a horrific civil war.
Copy !req
2194. What had started as part of the
Arab Spring
Copy !req
2195. had turned into a vicious battle
to the death
Copy !req
2196. between Bashar Assad
and his opponents.
Copy !req
2197. And at the heart of the conflict
Copy !req
2198. was the force that his father had
first brought to the West -
Copy !req
2199. suicide bombing.
Copy !req
2200. Back in the 1980s
Copy !req
2201. Bashar Assad's father had
seen suicide bombing
Copy !req
2202. as a weapon he could use
Copy !req
2203. to force the Americans
out of the Middle East.
Copy !req
2204. But over the next 30 years it had
shifted and mutated
Copy !req
2205. into something that had now ended up
doing the very opposite -
Copy !req
2206. tearing the Arab world apart.
Copy !req
2207. Hafez al-Assad's dream of a
powerful and united Arab world
Copy !req
2208. was now destroyed.
Copy !req
2209. In Iraq, extremist Sunni groups
had used suicide bombing
Copy !req
2210. as a way to start a sectarian war.
Copy !req
2211. And now groups like Isis brought the
same techniques into Syria
Copy !req
2212. to attack not just Assad's son
but his fellow Shi'ites.
Copy !req
2213. And like his father,
Bashar Assad retaliated
Copy !req
2214. with a vengeful fury.
Copy !req
2215. And the country fell apart.
Copy !req
2216. Allahu Akbar.
Copy !req
2217. Allahu Akbar. Allahu Akbar.
Copy !req
2218. My fellow Americans...
Copy !req
2219. tonight I want to talk to you
about Syria -
Copy !req
2220. why it matters and
where we go from here.
Copy !req
2221. Faced by the war, western
politicians were bewildered.
Copy !req
2222. They insisted Bashar Assad was evil.
Copy !req
2223. But then it turned out that
his enemies were more evil
Copy !req
2224. and more horrific than him.
Copy !req
2225. The question before the House today
Copy !req
2226. is how we keep the British people
safe from the threat
Copy !req
2227. posed by Isil.
Copy !req
2228. This is not about whether we want
to fight terrorism,
Copy !req
2229. it's about how best we do that.
Copy !req
2230. So Britain, America and France
Copy !req
2231. decided to bomb
the terrorist threat.
Copy !req
2232. But the effect of that
was to help keep Assad in power.
Copy !req
2233. Then it became more confusing.
Copy !req
2234. Suddenly, the Russians intervened.
Copy !req
2235. President Putin sent hundreds of
planes and combat troops
Copy !req
2236. to support Assad.
Copy !req
2237. But no-one knew what
their underlying aim was.
Copy !req
2238. They seemed to be using
a strategy that
Copy !req
2239. Vladislav Surkov had developed
in the Ukraine.
Copy !req
2240. He called it non-linear warfare.
Copy !req
2241. It was a new kind of war -
where you never know
Copy !req
2242. what the enemy are really up to.
Copy !req
2243. Allahu Akbar.
Copy !req
2244. The underlying aim, Surkov said,
was not to win the war,
Copy !req
2245. but to use the conflict
to create a constant state
Copy !req
2246. of destabilised perception -
Copy !req
2247. in order to manage and control.
Copy !req
2248. Allahu Akbar.
Copy !req
2249. In March 2016 the Russians suddenly
announced with a great fanfare
Copy !req
2250. that they were leaving Syria.
Copy !req
2251. And a concert was held
in the ruins of Palmyra
Copy !req
2252. to celebrate the withdrawal.
Copy !req
2253. But in reality,
the Russians never left.
Copy !req
2254. They are still there,
Copy !req
2255. and still
no-one knows what they want.
Copy !req
2256. And within Syria
there was a new Islamist ideologist
Copy !req
2257. who was determined to exploit
the growing uncertainties
Copy !req
2258. in Europe and America.
Copy !req
2259. He was called
Abu Musab al-Suri -
Copy !req
2260. the Syrian.
Copy !req
2261. Al-Suri had originally worked with
Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan,
Copy !req
2262. but he had turned against him.
Copy !req
2263. Al-Suri gave lectures that
had a powerful effect
Copy !req
2264. on the Islamist movement.
Copy !req
2265. He argued that
bin Laden had been wrong
Copy !req
2266. to attack the West head on,
Copy !req
2267. because it created a massive
military response
Copy !req
2268. that had almost destroyed Islamism.
Copy !req
2269. Instead, al-Suri said,
Copy !req
2270. independent groups or individuals
Copy !req
2271. should stage random,
small-scale attacks
Copy !req
2272. on civilians in Europe and America.
Copy !req
2273. The aim was to spread fear,
Copy !req
2274. uncertainty and doubt -
Copy !req
2275. and undermine the already failing
authority of western politicians.
Copy !req
2276. The effect of the attacks shocked
Europe and America
Copy !req
2277. and gave powerful force to the new
politics of uncertainty and anxiety.
Copy !req
2278. I'm sure that you, with me,
Copy !req
2279. share the absolute horror
and total revulsion
Copy !req
2280. at what happened in Paris
last Friday.
Copy !req
2281. And I'm afraid there is,
Copy !req
2282. and we have to be honest and frank
about this
Copy !req
2283. and talk about these things
without being fearful,
Copy !req
2284. there is a problem with some of the
Muslim community in this country.
Copy !req
2285. There is a problem.
And we have to be honest about it.
Copy !req
2286. Our politicians, I'm afraid,
haven't had the guts.
Copy !req
2287. This could be the great Trojan horse
of all time,
Copy !req
2288. because you look at the migration...
Study it, look at it.
Copy !req
2289. Now they'll start infiltrating
with women and children.
Copy !req
2290. Both the Brexit campaign in Britain
Copy !req
2291. and Donald Trump in America
Copy !req
2292. did exactly what
al-Suri had predicted.
Copy !req
2293. They used the fear to dramatise
a world where everything -
Copy !req
2294. even going to a restaurant -
had become a risky event.
Copy !req
2295. And what had been seen as doomed
campaigns on the fringes of society
Copy !req
2296. that could never win
became frighteningly real.
Copy !req
2297. I am genuinely freaked out right
now about this whole Brexit thing.
Copy !req
2298. Because we'd all been told that
it wasn't going to happen,
Copy !req
2299. like it was going away, it was going
away from Brexiting
Copy !req
2300. and on to the staying.
Copy !req
2301. And because I had this,
like bedrock belief...
Copy !req
2302. I have friends who, like,
live and work in London,
Copy !req
2303. and they said, "Don't worry,
we're a very sensible people."
Copy !req
2304. "This isn't going to happen.
It's a lot of talk,
Copy !req
2305. "but we don't do that
sort of stuff here."
Copy !req
2306. Um... they were wrong.
Copy !req
2307. And that really kind of
crushes my view of,
Copy !req
2308. like, what can happen that is bad
Copy !req
2309. that we don't think
is going to happen.
Copy !req
2310. Like it's just not supposed
to happen.
Copy !req
2311. I fear that we are watching
Copy !req
2312. the stirrings of fascism
in Europe again.
Copy !req
2313. And I genuinely never thought
it would be my country
Copy !req
2314. that did that.
Copy !req
2315. I thought this would be America.
Copy !req
2316. I thought America was the people
who were so filled with hate.
Copy !req
2317. Not us.
Copy !req
2318. And I'm so disappointed.
Copy !req
2319. I'm so hurt.
Copy !req
2320. Zee.
Copy !req
2321. Standing Room Only
by Barbara Mandrell.
Copy !req
2322. This is my right to free speech
going on here, OK?
Copy !req
2323. Oh.
Copy !req
2324. You're on video. Oh.
Copy !req
2325. Say bye, Heather.
Copy !req